Here is a list of books and DVDs that are recommended for participants on the August 2008 Teachers’ Tour.  Although these readings are of course optional, it is recommended that those going on the Reality Tour try to familiarize themselves with some of the people, places and historical events we will be studying.  This will greatly enhance your travel and learning experience, and will allow more active participation in our encounters with the artists, activists, and community members we plan to meet.

If you only have time for one of these books, I’d suggest the Caribbean Connections anthology. It is an easy, pleasurable read, and addresses many of the different themes that we will encounter.  

Caribbean Connections: The Dominican Republic

Available at: Teaching for Change

    The U.S. has sent troops to Haiti and the Dominican Republic four times in this century, twice to each country. In the last 20 years, reports Wucker, one-eighth of the population of the island of Hispaniola has emigrated to the U.S. Wucker, a freelance journalist, delves much deeper than mere numbers and chronology, supplementing her knowledge of the island's history with a great sense of the fabric of everyday life in the two countries.

     While each chapter is discrete enough to stand alone, cumulatively they create a passionate mural of the often bloody relationship between wary neighbors. Among the critical issues and events Wucker addresses are the role of geography as a barrier, European settlement, slave revolts, the role of the sugar industry and the experience of Dominican and Haitian immigrants in the U.S.

Wucker's treatment of Dominican racism toward Haitians is particularly good, capturing the nuance and ambivalence at work when two peoples who are not nearly as different as they would sometimes like to believe are stuck together on a small piece of land with limited resources. Throughout the book, Wucker uses the metaphor of cockfighting, presenting the countries as two roosters forced (sometimes by the U.S.) to battle in a small, enclosed ring. If she relies a bit too heavily on this trope, Wucker more than makes up for the minor indulgence with her insightful treatment of many cultural issues, particularly the politicized nature of language, to which she brings an understanding of Creole, Spanish and French.

Brennan, Denise: What’s Love Got To Do With It? : Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic

In locations around the world, sex tourism is a booming business. What's Love Got to Do with It? is an in-depth examination of the motivations of workers, clients, and others connected to the sex tourism business in Sosúa, a town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. Denise Brennan considers why Dominican and Haitian women move to Sosúa to pursue sex work and describes how sex tourists, primarily Europeans, come to Sosúa to buy sex cheaply and live out racialized fantasies. For the sex workers, Brennan explains, the sex trade is more than a means of survival—it is an advancement strategy that hinges on their successful “performance” of love. Many of these women seek to turn a commercialized sexual transaction into a long-term relationship that could lead to marriage, migration, and a way out of poverty.

Illuminating the complex world of Sosúa’s sex business in rich detail, Brennan draws on extensive interviews not only with sex workers and clients, but also with others who facilitate and benefit from the sex trade. She weaves these voices into an analysis of Dominican economic and migration histories to consider the opportunities—or lack thereof—available to poor Dominican women. She shows how these women, local actors caught in a web of global economic relations, try to take advantage of the foreign men who are in Sosúa to take advantage of them. Through her detailed study of the lives and working conditions of the women in Sosúa’s sex trade, Brennan raises important questions about women’s power, control, and opportunities in a globalized economy.

Alvarez, Julia: The Time of Butterflies

On November 25, 1960, the bodies of three sisters were found near the bottom of a cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official daily 'El Caribe' reports that it had been an accident, but it does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it mention the sisters' fierce opposition to the General Trujillo's dictatorship. This is their story: how Minerva started the tragedy by refusing Trujillo; how Patria became an opponent from the church itself; how Maria Teresa joined the revolution through the love. And how they lost their wings, but not their courage. They were Las Mariposas - "The Butterflies".

The novel was also made into a film adaptation that is widely available on DVD. The film stars Salma Hayek as Minerva Mirabal.

Sugar Cane Alley (1983) DVD

Although this story is set in Martinique of the 1920’s, it presents a portrait of Batey life that in many ways is quite similar today. It is also one of the few commercial films that represents colonialism from the point of view on the colonized. It is based on the true life story of author Joseph Zobel.

Touching without being sentimental, political without being preachy, this story set in 1930s Martinique is both lyrical and powerful. Writer-director Euzhan Palcy tells the story of a young boy who is orphaned at the age of 11 and sent to live with his grandmother, who works on one of the island's sugar cane plantations. Though he is bright, she realizes he has no future if he stays on the plantation. So she does what she can to keep him in school and away from the back-breaking, will-sapping hard labor to which she's devoted her life. Can he rise above his humble beginnings? Will he forget about his self-sacrificing grandmother and leave her behind? Palcy deals with these issues with great emotion but no false sentimentality in this poignant film. In French with English subtitles. --Marshall Fine

The Price of Sugar (2007) DVD

Paul Newman narrates this documentary about the thousands of dispossessed Haitians in the Dominican Republic who work grueling hours harvesting sugarcane and one man's attempt to help them secure decent working and living conditions. Filmmaker Bill Haney captures the plantations' shockingly subpar conditions and the efforts of Spanish priest Father Christopher Hartley to bring clean water, health care, housing and education to the workers.