Part I (chapter 1) argues that the Malay world was highly ethnically mixed and
creolized prior to 1800, as evidenced by Arab honorifics assuming new meanings, the prominence of sayyids rather than Arabs (such as less prominent racial categories), hybrid titles, multilingual facilities, and mixed-race Arab Malays closely connecting with both sides of their families.
As each of these chapters shows, however, Victorianism did not transfer easily to the tropics: Ideologies, architecture, sports, and fashion were each
creolized. Finally, a set of six chapters tackles the issues of race and belonging in post-emancipation society.
To help her cope, Fabiola turns to Vodou, "a
creolized religion forged by descendants of [...] African ethnic groups who had been enslaved and brought to [Haiti] and Christianized by Roman Catholic missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries" (McAlister, 2018).
A
creolized subject (daughter of a Carib mother and a half Scot, half-African father), the novel's protagonist, Xuela Claudette Richardson, embodies resistance, for she not only survives her mother's death, but she also survives her father's subsequent abandonment and several foster homes.
In her discussions of Michelle Cliff and Derek Walcott she reiterates the idea that Sephardic references in their works "promote a vision of the Caribbean as a profoundly
creolized space" (46).
But in 1938, he recorded eight hours of Jelly Roll Morton's reminiscences of turn-of-the-century New Orleans, "where the birth of jazz originated." (7) It struck Lomax then that this city--its gallimaufry of races and classes with their rich and messy and fraught
creolized culture--was an ideal of American culture at large, and it hit him with the force of revelation.
Continual shifts in place time, and character are accompanied by lively shifts in language that move between
creolized forms of English and more standardized forms: "Gracie feel from she is small-small that she will never be like Pansy, eldest child of all, strong and facety, fearing nothing" is the opening line of one of the introductory chapters.
In sum, readers are invited to follow the inspiring ways of
creolized Antillanite throughout the collection of essays, announced as "broadly philosophical" (p.