Cimarrón/ Marron/ Maroon

Small Axe 71, July 2023

Contributors

Tolin Alexander is a theater maker. His intercultural and interdisciplinary work draws inspiration from Suriname's multi-ethnic culture, particularly as it relates to his own Maroon culture and traditions. Alexander participates in numerous national and international exchange projects with individual artists and organizations in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Recent projects include: Swartgat/Dunguolo (2020), Stones Have Laws (IDFA film 2018), and the theaterwork, Lofzang op de Vrijheid, 2018).

Corinna Campbell is an ethnomusicologist and Associate Professor of Music at Williams College. Her research among the Suriname Maroons highlights themes including: music/dance interconnections, Surinamese cultural nationalism, culture-representational/folkloric performance, and the politics of performance. She is the author of The Cultural Work: Maroon Performance in Paramaribo, Suriname (Wesleyan, 2020).

Johnhenry Gonzalez is university Associate Professor of Caribbean history in the Cambridge Faculty of History. His 2019 book Maroon Nation focuses on the Haitian Revolution and the early decades of Haitian independence.  He teaches on the Caribbean and the African Diaspora and he is currently writing a book on history of the 20^th century Haitian art business. 

Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva is Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at the University of Washington. She is the author of the award-winning book Silencing Race: Disentangling Race, Colonialism, and National Identities in Puerto Rico (1850-1920) (NY: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012) and co-editor of The Politics of Storytelling in Island Imperial Formations, Positions: Asia Critique 21, Issue 1, (2021). 

SJ Zhang is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago. Their current project, Going Maroon and Other Forms of Family, considers how reproduction and carceral forces shaped the decisions and triggered the archives of four women who went maroon in North America and the Caribbean between 1781 and 1820. Zhang’s work is published in Representations, Women & Performance, Transition, and Caribbean Literature in Transition, Volume 1: 1800-1920.