richard price & sally price

Vents d'ailleurs, 2003

Saramaka canoemen in French Guiana, early 20th century

Saramaka shrine to a sea god in French Guiana

Les Marrons

par Richard Price et Sally Price

Written in part for journalists, politicians, educators, civil servants, and others in French Guiana who have expressed a desire to go beyond the pervasive stereotypes that circulate about the Maroon populations living in their midst. Also aimed at a new generation of Maroons, many of whom are now schooled in French and seriously interested in their own history. For readers who wish to gain a basic understanding of who these people are, the book provides an introduction to the historical background of the four Maroon peoples in French Guiana (Alukus, Ndyukas, Paramakas, and Saramakas), clarifies the ways in which these groups differ from one another culturally, and traces the main lines of their respective contributions to French Guiana at different points in time. This is an activist work that highlights the challenges faced by the French state in dealing with cultural difference and the human rights of Maroons. Although it is intended for a broad (non-academic) audience, it includes considerable new research that we have not published elsewhere.

Les Marrons is available from the French on-line booksellers: www.fnac.com and www.amazon.fr

People masquerading as stereotypic "maroons" in the Cayenne carnival

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Selected Books:

Travels with Tooy: History, Memory, and the African American Imagination
Winner of the 2008 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, the 2009 Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship, and the 2009 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion. . . . "An astonishing performance ... as lucid and cordial as the best contemporary fiction.”--George Lamming
Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly
"A delicious combination of art, anthropology, and politics"--Lucy R. Lippard
Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension
A lavishly-illustrated art book
Les Marrons
A French-language original, printed in full color.
Maroon Arts
"A tour-de-force ... a true marriage of anthropology and art history." --Fred Myers, New York University
Primitive Art in Civilized Places
"A witty, but scholarly, indictment of the whole primitive art business." --Newsweek
The Convict and The Colonel
"A superb calaloo of a book ... that explores the underlying insanity of the colonial experience." --George Lamming
Enigma Variations: A Novel
"A true gem... The promise of literary ethnography is fulfilled: to educate and, just as a lark, to entertain." --African Arts
First-Time: The Historical Vision of an African American People
"Sensitive and honest, First-Time is required reading for all who seek to learn something new through first-hand, long-term research with non-western intellectuals" --Ethnohistory
Alabi's World
"A splendid effort to recover the past." --New York Review of Books
Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas
"A splendid anthology, skillfully edited and introduced." --Eugene D. Genovese
The Birth of African-American Culture
"An innovative analysis of the creativity of African-Americans under the extreme constraints of slavery." --Rebecca Scott
Co-Wives and Calabashes
"Conceived with sophistication but presented with simplicity and clarity" --Choice
Equatoria
"A brilliantly crafted experiment in postmodern narration --J. Jorge Klor de Alva, president, University of Phoenix
Two Evenings in Saramaka
As seas dry up, books speak out loud, and elephants assume human form, we are present at a whole sequence of world-shaping happenings such as the invention of sex, the discovery of drums,and the arrival of death among humans.
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