Améfrica in Letters: Literary Interventions from Mexico to the Southern Cone
Améfrica in Letters: Literary Interventions from Mexico to the Southern Cone
edited by Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar contributions by Juan Guillermo Sánchez Martínez, Juan Eduardo Wolf, Ángela Castro, Gloria Chacón, Isis Barra Costa, Michael Handelsman, Eliseo Jacob, Diana Rodríguez Quevedo and Paulette Ramsay afterword by Mamadou Badiane
Vanderbilt University Press, 2022 Cloth: 978-0-8265-0514-9 | Paper: 978-0-8265-0513-2 | eISBN: 978-0-8265-0515-6 (ePub) | eISBN: 978-0-8265-0516-3 (PDF) Library of Congress Classification PQ7081.7.B55A59 2022 Dewey Decimal Classification 860.0899608
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Traditional histories of Black letters in Latin America have delimited their geographic scope to the Caribbean while also omitting intertwined Afro-Indigenous discourses. Inspired by the legacy of Amefrican thinker Lélia Gonzalez, Améfrica in Letters highlights the Black poets, songwriters, novelists, essayists, and bloggers who have created a counter-multiculturalist literary history on the Latin American mainland. To capture a sense of the variety of their contributions, this book spans Mexico, Central America, the Andes, and the Southern Cone—highlighting the transcontinental nature of the legacy of Black writing and its impact beyond national boundaries. The writers examined in the volume engage with regional intellectual frameworks while putting into circulation a demand for a recalibration of the Hispanophone and Lusophone contexts in which they and other Afrodescendants reside.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Jennifer C. Gómez Menjívar is an associate professor at the University of North Texas.
REVIEWS
“Coherent and well written . . . draws attention to relatively obscure and unattended areas of literary and cultural production in Afro-Hispanic cartography.”
—Jerome C. Branche, author of The Poetics and Politics of Diaspora: Transatlantic Musings
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Black Writing on the Latin American Mainland: Disruptions to the Prose of Multiculturalism Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar
Part I: Afro Poetics
1. Language and the Construction of Gendered Identities in Afro-Mexican Corridos or Ballads Paulette A. Ramsay
2. A Post-Ethnic/Racial Futurescape in Wingston González’s cafeína MC Juan Guillermo Sánchez Martínez
3. Antonio Preciado: Ecuador’s Afrocentric Poet Michael Handelsman
Part II: Lettered Outliers
4. Transatlantic Routing and Rooting in Quince Duncan’s Kimbo Gloria Elizabeth Chacón
5. The Palimpsestic Afro-Panamanian Woman in Melanie Taylor Herrera’s Camino a Mariato Ángela Castro
6. Black Lives Matter in Brazil: Cidinha da Silva’s #Parem de nós matar Eliseo Jacob
Part III: Intellectual Sonar
7. Other Forests: The Afro-Brazilian Literary Archive Isis Barra Costa
8. Dismantling Coloniality via the Vocabulary of Afro-Chilean and Afro-Puerto Rican Music-Dance Juan Eduardo Wolf
9. Xiomara Cacho Caballero: Linguistic Heritage and Afro-Indigenous Survivance on Roatán Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar
10. Reclaiming Lands, Identity, and Autonomy: Rapping Youth in Rural Chocó, Colombia Diana Rodríguez Quevedo
Afterword: Racial Encounters in the Americas in Times of Black Lives Matter Mamadou Badiane