Tigers of a Different Stripe takes readers inside the unique world of merengue típico, a traditional music of the Dominican Republic. While in most genres of Caribbean music women usually participate as dancers or vocalists, in merengue típico they are more often instrumentalists and even bandleaders—something nearly unheard of in the macho Caribbean music scene. Examining this cultural phenomenon, Sydney Hutchinson offers an unexpected and fascinating account of gender in Dominican art and life. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork in the Dominican Republic and New York among musicians, fans, and patrons of merengue típico—not to mention her own experiences as a female instrumentalist—Hutchinson details a complex nexus of class, race, and artistic tradition that unsettles the typical binary between the masculine and feminine. She sketches the portrait of the classic male figure of the tíguere, a dandified but sexually aggressive and street-smart “tiger,” and she shows how female musicians have developed a feminine counterpart: the tíguera, an assertive, sensual, and respected female figure who looks like a woman but often plays and even sings like a man. Through these musical figures and studies of both straight and queer performers, she unveils rich ambiguities in gender construction in the Dominican Republic and the long history of a unique form of Caribbean feminism.

In Tigers of a Different Stripe, ethnomusicologist Sydney Hutchinson examines a variety of music genres in the Dominician Republic, and its diasporic communities, to shed light on how gender is performed through music, especially merengue tipico, a traditional, accordion-based genre that has undergone great change since the 1960s. Hutchinson goes beyond looking at just the music itself, to how dancing and listening, as well as viewing and discussing music, all play a part in gender performance and construction. Dominican gender roles are usually defined by a binary understanding of gender that is at its worst sexist and patriarchal, with macho men and subservient women. Hutchinson shows how wrong this is in musical performance, where musicians like Rita Indiana bend both gender and genre. The discussion naturally expands to movement, migration, race, class, and notions of tradition and modernity. In the end, Tigers shows how music can either reinforce entrenched gender roles or help to open up possibilities by imagining new roles and identities for all."

Read Along or Enhanced eBook: Many years ago, the proudest animal in the jungle was not the peacock. The proudest animal was the tiger. In this timeless folktale from Vietnam, we see how Tiger's pride leads him to covet wisdom and, with the help of a wise farmer, earn his stripes.

Dorje is a beautiful Royal Bengal tiger - but he has no stripes. In a small Buddhist monastery in Tibet, Master Wu explains the reasons behind Dorje's missing stripes, and offers hope for the future.

A tiger searches for his stripes when he wakes up one morning to discover that they have disappeared.

A young tiger born without stripes wonders why she alone is different. As she grows, her feeling of incompleteness draws her on a quest she hopes will make her whole. Will her efforts to earn her stripes pay off, or will she find a surprising answer to the question that has defined her life?

Board book edition of the best-selling winner of the Waterstones Childrens Book Prize, Illustrated Book Category.