Unmastering the Script

Unmastering the Script: The Struggle to Reconcile the Haitian Other in Dominican Identity" examines how school curriculum-based representations of Dominican identity navigate black racial identity, its relatedness to Haiti, and the culturally entrenched pejorative image of the Haitian Other in Dominican society. The authors analyze how social science textbooks and historical biographies intended for young Dominicans reflect an increasing shift toward a clear and public inclusion of blackness in Dominican identity that serves to renegotiate the country's long-standing "anti-black" racial master script. This book argues that although many of the attempts at this inclusion reflect a lessening of "black denial," when considered as a whole, the materials often struggle to find a consistent and coherent narrative for the place of blackness within Dominican identity, particularly as blackness continues to be meaningfully related to the otherness of Haitian racial identity"--