Radical Moves - by Lara Putnam (Paperback)

About the Book

Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age

Book Synopsis

In the generations after emancipation, hundreds of thousands of African-descended working-class men and women left their homes in the British Caribbean to seek opportunity abroad: in the goldfields of Venezuela and the cane fields of Cuba, the canal construction in Panama, and the bustling city streets of Brooklyn. But in the 1920s and 1930s, racist nativism and a brutal cascade of antiblack immigration laws swept the hemisphere. Facing borders and barriers as never before, Afro-Caribbean migrants rethought allegiances of race, class, and empire. In Radical Moves, Lara Putnam takes readers from tin-roof tropical dancehalls to the elegant black-owned ballrooms of Jazz Age Harlem to trace the roots of the black-internationalist and anticolonial movements that would remake the twentieth century.
From Trinidad to 136th Street, these were years of great dreams and righteous demands. Praying or "jazzing," writing letters to the editor or letters home, Caribbean men and women tried on new ideas about the collective. The popular culture of black internationalism they created--from Marcus Garvey's UNIA to "regge" dances, Rastafarianism, and Joe Louis's worldwide fandom--still echoes in the present.

Review Quotes

Radical Moves is splendid, engagingly written, and keenly researched.--Journal of American History

A major work, one that illuminates a region and shows the surprising commonalities between the experiences of those within the United States and its hemispheric neighbors in the years leading up to World War II. The traces of those commonalities resonate into the present day, like a "regge" dance in Port Limon, for those who learn to listen.--Los Angeles Review of Books

A tightly argued case of terrific historical scholarship.--H-Net Reviews

Both an enjoyable read and a very important book.--American Historical Review

Filled with insightful details. . . . A very exciting and refreshing take on circum-Caribbean migrations and black internationalism. Putnam hits multiple high notes in this scholarly composition.--Journal of African American History

Putnam makes a range of important interventions beyond the study of jazz.--Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

Putnam's greatest contribution comes from her ability to bring seemingly disparate stories together to tell a transnational history of migration, racism, and everyday resistance."-Hispanic American Historical Review

Scholars of both the British Caribbean and Latin America are sure to be enthused by Lara Putnam's latest monograph.--The Americas

This extraordinarily thoughtful, original, well-researched study is delightfully and engagingly written. . . . Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.--Choice