Worlds Apart

Long before the physical advent of Blacks in Europe Professor Dathorne asserts they featured over and over again in literature as marginalized Others but rarely were real Blacks present. As English developed as a language race came into the evolution of the signifiers so that words like darkness blackness and so on became heavily charged with negative connotations.Using travel literature as well as figures on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage and material from later writers Dathorne shows how negative elements surrounding Blackness were transferred to Native Americans to Indians from India to South Pacific islanders and others. A provocative analysis for scholars students and researchers involved with Ethnic Studies Cultural Studies and race.