richard price & sally price

Indiana University Press, 1994

On the Mall

by Richard and Sally Price

Saramakas on the Mall

In 1992, the Festival of American Folklife, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife Programs, featured representatives from Maroon communities in Jamaica, Mexico, Suriname, French Guiana, and elsewhere. Dubbed "tradition-bearers" by the Festival's organizers, these descendants of rebel Afro-American slaves danced and drummed, cooked and sang, displayed their arts and crafts, and interacted with interested visitors on the Washington Mall. The Prices, who accompanied the group as translators, facilitators, and festival "presenters," chronicle the Maroons' experience and relate it to the experiences of participants in earlier cultural exhibitions such as world's fairs and colonial expositions.

Selected Books:

Travels with Tooy: History, Memory, and the African American Imagination
Winner of the 2008 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing and the 2009 Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship. "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.
Si usted habla español...
Si vous parlez français...
Als U nederlands spreekt...
Se você fala português...
Find Authors