Creole Indigeneity: Between Myth and Nation in the Caribbean

Acknowledgments

This has been a long and difficult work, and I think that I can say, without too much confusion, that the person who finished this book is not the one who began it. Both thank the following people for reading portions of the manuscript: Koritha Mitchell, M. Jimmie Killingsworth, Nandini Bhattacharya , Christopher M. Sutch (under duress), Charles Rowell, Paul Christensen , and Anne Morey. I thank Robert Griffin for his diligence and guidance in helping me draft a proposal. Yael Ben-zvi faithfully read a first draft of the entire manuscript, sometimes aloud to Yael Ronen, and gave me great feedback . I thank her for her friendship, encouragement, and wisdom. At Texas A&M University, several graduate research assistants between 2006 and 2010 were instrumental in helping me collect and organize research: Yeonsik Jung, Crystal Boson, De’Jhan Burns, Courtney Stoker, Matthew Davis. The Glasscock Center for the Humanities has supported this project on numerous occasions with Stipendiary Fellowships. Without these fellowships and an award from the Program to Enhance Scholarly and Creative Activities (PESCA), the research would not have been completed. In Guyana, I thank for their help with research the amazing staff at the library of the University of Guyana and Jeanne Whishurt of the Amerindian Research Unit. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Basil Rodrigues and his family for allowing me to conduct interviews and giving me a place to sleep when I had none. I thank Jean La Rose, Miranda La Rose, and Francis Farrier for taking time out of busy schedules to allow me to interview them. I thank my wonderful aunt Grace Ann Parris and her sons Ashton and Odel for putting me up, helping me get around, assisting with last-minute permissions, and for a night at the Sea Wall. Acknowledgments 235 236 Acknowledgments Portions of this work were presented at the Modern Language Association , the American Studies Association, the Caribbean Studies Association, and at A&M through the Glasscock Faculty Colloquium. I owe a debt of gratitude to my mentors in graduate school: Sylvia Wynter, for long talks at her home and profoundly shaping my intellectual path; Mary Pratt and Paula Moya, for their work, for always supporting me and showing me how to do so for others; John Rickford, for that little piece of Guyana at Stanford; and the incomparable Arnold Rampersad. Without Shireen K. Lewis and the wonderful women of SisterMentors, I would not have finished the dissertation . I thank the fabulous intellectual community of MTLers at Stanford: Yael Ben-zvi, Maria Ruth Flores, Bakirathi Mani, Lisa Arellano, Mishuana Goeman, Helle Rytkønen, Raul Coronado, Kyla Tompkins, Ebony Coletu, Evelyn Alsultany, Lisa Thompson, Tim’m West, and especially Nicole Fleetwood and Celine Shimizu for their advice and help always. None of us would have made it through without the support of Monica Moore and Jan Hafner. Although they may not remember precisely when, Sandra Paquet and Carole Boyce Davies provided words of support at crucial moments: Sandra by giving me the courage to finish the dissertation and Carole the courage to finish the book. I also thank Cheryl Wall and Judylyn Ryan, who, when I was an undergraduate, both suggested English rather than accounting. At A&M, I thank Anne Morey and Claudia Nelson for mentorship. I thank Anitra Grisales for editing an early draft of the manuscript. At the University of Minnesota Press, Jason Weidemann has been terrific, as has his assistant Danielle Kasprzak. Without Jason I would never have attended the conference of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), where I always needed to be. The First Peoples Manuscript Development workshop with Mishuana was wonderfully helpful in the last month of revisions —Mark Rifkin, you are the bomb! Elizabeth DeLoughrey and Jodi Byrd helped tremendously to make this manuscript what it is. I owe them a debt of gratitude. For seventeen years, Karina L. Cespedes Cortes has been a wonderful friend, from helping me stretch colones by sharing boiled cassava and macaroni in Costa Rica to coming all the way to Guyana with me, helping with interviews and sleeping on the floor in Moruca. I thank my writing partner at A&M, Zulema Valdez. For friendship and guidance along the way, I thank Gina Dorcely. My most heartfelt thanks go to Scott Trafton, who taught me how to P.L.O.A.P and so much more. The brilliant and hard-working Faedra Carpenter was there every week, every day, every time I needed her, from [3.133.147.87] Project MUSE (2024-04...