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Black Behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops. Ginetta E.B. Candelario. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2007. xiii + 340 pp. (Paper US $ 23.95)
In this book, Ginetta E.B. Candelario examines the negotiation of a Dominican identity in four related sites of representation: travel narratives, the museum, the beauty shop, and the female body. Based on extensive ethnographic and historical research, the book offers a comprehensive analysis of the way in which an Indo-Hispanic identity is constructed, represented, and contested against the backdrop of Dominican national building projects, a troubled relationship with Haiti, the impact of U.S. imperialism, and the glorification of the Hispanic heritage. Since Dominicans participate in their own construction, through words, images, icons, and body techniques, such representations are left open to interpretation. Indeed, for Candelario the issue is not whether Dominicans are "in fact" black, but rather the multiple strategies they deploy when confronted with the black behind the face of Dominican national politics (p. 2). To this end, she focuses on how ethnoracial discourses are narrated, internalized, and displayed by actors and institutions in three historically connected geographic locations: Santo Domingo, Washington D.C., and New York City.
Candelario is aware that identities can be "situational, equivocal and ambiguous," mediated by power relations and the ever-shifting boundaries of the nation (p. 7). Yet, in order to understand an ideological code that celebrates Hispanicity of a different hue and hair texture, she first delves into the racial politics of colonial...