The Afro-Latin@ Reader

The Afro-Latin@ Reader

History and Culture in the United States

  • Author: Jiménez Román, Miriam; Flores, Juan; Wood, Peter H.; Forbes, Jack D.; Gould, Virginia Meacham; Greenbaum, Susan D.
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • Serie: a John Hope Franklin Center Book
  • ISBN: 9780822345589
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822391319
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2010
  • Month: July
  • Pages: 584
  • DDC: 305.800973
  • Language: English
The Afro-Latin@ Reader focuses attention on a large, vibrant, yet oddly invisible community in the United States: people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean. The presence of Afro-Latin@s in the United States (and throughout the Americas) belies the notion that Blacks and Latin@s are two distinct categories or cultures. Afro-Latin@s are uniquely situated to bridge the widening social divide between Latin@s and African Americans; at the same time, their experiences reveal pervasive racism among Latin@s and ethnocentrism among African Americans. Offering insight into Afro-Latin@ life and new ways to understand culture, ethnicity, nation, identity, and antiracist politics, The Afro-Latin@ Reader presents a kaleidoscopic view of Black Latin@s in the United States. It addresses history, music, gender, class, and media representations in more than sixty selections, including scholarly essays, memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles, poetry, short stories, and interviews.

While the selections cover centuries of Afro-Latin@ history, since the arrival of Spanish-speaking Africans in North America in the mid-sixteenth-century, most of them focus on the past fifty years. The central question of how Afro-Latin@s relate to and experience U.S. and Latin American racial ideologies is engaged throughout, in first-person accounts of growing up Afro-Latin@, a classic essay by a leader of the Young Lords, and analyses of U.S. census data on race and ethnicity, as well as in pieces on gender and sexuality, major-league baseball, and religion. The contributions that Afro-Latin@s have made to U.S. culture are highlighted in essays on the illustrious Afro-Puerto Rican bibliophile Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and music and dance genres from salsa to mambo, and from boogaloo to hip hop. Taken together, these and many more selections help to bring Afro-Latin@s in the United States into critical view.

Contributors: Afro–Puerto Rican Testimonies Project, Josefina Baéz, Ejima Baker, Luis Barrios, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Adrian Burgos Jr., Ginetta E. B. Candelario, Adrián Castro, Jesús Colón, Marta I. Cruz-Janzen, William A. Darity Jr., Milca Esdaille, Sandra María Esteves, María Teresa Fernández (Mariposa), Carlos Flores, Juan Flores, Jack D. Forbes, David F. Garcia, Ruth Glasser, Virginia Meecham Gould, Susan D. Greenbaum, Evelio Grillo, Pablo “Yoruba” Guzmán, Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Tanya K. Hernández, Victor Hernández Cruz, Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, Lisa Hoppenjans, Vielka Cecilia Hoy, Alan J. Hughes, María Rosario Jackson, James Jennings, Miriam Jiménez Román, Angela Jorge, David Lamb, Aida Lambert, Ana M. Lara, Evelyne Laurent-Perrault, Tato Laviera, John Logan, Antonio López, Felipe Luciano, Louis Pancho McFarland, Ryan Mann-Hamilton, Wayne Marshall, Marianela Medrano, Nancy Raquel Mirabal, Yvette Modestin, Ed Morales, Jairo Moreno, Marta Moreno Vega, Willie Perdomo, Graciela Pérez Gutiérrez, Sofia Quintero, Ted Richardson, Louis Reyes Rivera, Pedro R. Rivera , Raquel Z. Rivera, Yeidy Rivero, Mark Q. Sawyer, Piri Thomas, Silvio Torres-Saillant, Nilaja Sun, Sherezada “Chiqui” Vicioso, Peter H. Wood

  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Editorial Note
  • Introduction
  • I. Historical Background before 1900
    • Peter H. Wood: The Earliest Africans in North America
    • Jack D. Forbes: Black Pioneers: The Spanish-Speaking Afro-Americans of the Southwest
    • Virginia Meacham Gould: Slave and Free Women of Color in the Spanish Ports of New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola
    • Susan D. Greenbaum: Afro-Cubans in Tampa
    • Adrián Castro: Excerpt from "Pulling the Muse from the Drum"
  • II. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
    • Arthur A. Schomburg: Excerpt from "Racial Integrity: A Plea for the Establishment of a Chair of Negro History in Our Schools and Colleges"
    • Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof: The World of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
    • Evelyne Laurent-Perrault: Invoking Arturo Schomburg's Legacy in Philadelphia
  • III. Afro-Latin@s on the Color Line
    • Evelio Grillo: Black Cuban, Black American
    • Jesús Colón: A Puerto Rican in New and Other Sketches
    • Nancy Raquel Mirabal: Melba Alvarado, El Club Cubano Inter-Americano, and the Creation of Afro-Cubanidades in New York City
    • Adrian Burgos Jr.: An Uneven Playing Field: Afro-Latinos in Major League Basball
    • Gabriel Haslip-Viera: Changing Identities: An Afro-Latin@ Family Portrait
    • Graciela: ¡Eso era tremendo!: An Afro-Cuban Musician Remembers
  • IV. Roots of Salsa: Afro-Latin@ Popular Music
    • Ruth Glasser: From "Indianola" to “Ño Colá”: The Stranger Career of the Afro-Puerto Rican Musician
    • Louis Reyes Rivera: Excerpt from "cu/bop"
    • Jairo Moreno: Bauzá-Gillespie-Latin/Jazz: Difference, Modernity, and the Black Carribbean
    • David F. García: Contesting that Damned Mambo: Arsenio Rodríguez and the People of El Barrio and the Bronx in the 1950s
    • Juan Flores: Boogaloo and Latin Soul
    • Tato Laviera: Excerpt from "the salsa of bethesda fountain"
  • V. Black Latin@ Sixties
    • Carlos Cooks: Hair Conking; Buy Black
    • Pedro R. Rivera: Carlos A. Cooks: Dominican Garveyite in Harlem
    • Piri Thomas: Down These Mean Streets
    • Victor Hernández Cruz: African Things
    • Sandra María Esteves: Black Notes and "You Do Something to Me"
    • Pablo “ Yoruba” Guzmán: Before People Called Me a Spic, They Called me a Nigger
    • Felipe Luciano: Excerpt from "Jíbaro, My Pretty Nigger"
    • Marta Moreno Vega: The Yoruba Orisha Tradition Comes to New York City
    • Luis Barrios: Reflections and Lived Experiences of Afro-Latin@ Religiosity
    • Sherezada "Chiqui" Vicioso: Discovering Myself: Un Testimonio
    • Josefina Báez: Excerpt from "Dominicanish"
  • VI. Afro-Latinas
    • Angela Jorge: The Black Puerto Rican Woman in Contemporary American Society
    • Spring Redd: Something Latino Was Up with Us
    • Mariposa (María Teresa Fernández): Excerpt from "Poem for My Grifa-Rican Sistah, or Broken Ends Broken Promises"
    • Marta I. Cruz-Janzen: Latinegras: Desired Women-Undesirable Mothers, Daughterse, Sisters, and Wives
    • Nilaja Sun: Letter to a Friend
    • Ana M. Lara: Uncovering Mirrors: Afro-Latina Lesbian Subjects
    • Marianela Medrano: The Black Bellybutton of a Bongo
  • VII. Public Images and (Mis) Representations
    • Miriam Jiménez Román: Notes on Eusebia Cosme and Juano Hernández
    • Carlos Flores: Desde el Mero Medio: Race Discrimination with the Latin@ Community
    • Ginetta E. B. Candelario: Displaying Identity: Dominicans in the Black Mosaic of Washington, D.C.
    • Yeidy M. Rivero: Bringing the Soul: Afros, Black Empowerment, and Lucecita Benítez
    • Ejima Baker: Can Bet: Make You Black? Remixing and Reshaping Latin@s on Black Entertainment Television
    • Alan Hughes and Milca Esdaille: The Afro-Latino Connection: Can this group be the bridge to a broadbased Black-Hispanic alliance?
  • VIII. Afro-Latin@s in the Hip Hop Zone
    • Raquel Z. Rivera: Ghettocentricity, Blackness, and Pan-Latinidad
    • Pancho McFarland: Chicano Rap Roots: Afro-Mexico and Black-Brown Cultural Exchange
    • Wayne Marshall: The Rise and Fall of Reggaeton: From Daddy Yankee to Tego Calderón and Beyond
    • David Lamb: Do Plátanos Go wit’ Collard Greens?
    • Sofia Quintero: Dvias Don't Yield
  • IX. Living Afro-Latinidades
    • Yvette Modestin: An Afro-Latina's Quest for Inclusion
    • Ryan Mann-Hamilton: Retracing Migration: From Samaná to New York and Back Again
    • Vielka Cecilia Hoy: Negotiating among Invisibilities: Tales of Afro-Latinidades in the United States
    • Aida Lambert: We Are Black Too: Experiences of a Honduran Garifuna
    • María Rosario Jackson: Profile of an Afro-Latina: Black, Mexican, Both
    • Antonio López: Enrique Patterson: Black Cuban Intellectual in Cuban Miami
    • Eduardo Bonilla-Silva: Reflections about Race by a Negrito Acomplejao
    • Silvio Torres-Saillant: Divisible Blackness: Reflections on Hetergeneity and Racial Identity
    • Willie Perdomo: Nigger-Reecan Blues
  • X. Afro-Latin@s: Present and Future Tenses
    • John R. Logan: How Race Counts for Hispanic Americans
    • William A. Darity Jr., Jason Dietrich, and Darrick Hamilton: Bleach in the Rainbow: Latino Ethnicity and Preference for Whiteness
    • Ed Morales: Brown Like Me?
    • Afro-Puerto Rican Testimonies: An Oral History Project in Western Puerto Rico: Against the Myth of Racial Harmony in Puerto Rico
    • Lisa Hoppenjans and Ted Richardson: Mexican Ways, African Roots
    • Tanya Katerí Hernández: Afro-Latin@s and the Latin@ Workplace
    • Mark Sawyer: Racial Politics in Multiethnic America: Black and Latin@ Identities and Coalitions
    • James Jennings: Afro-Latinism in United States Society: A Commentary
  • Sources and Permissions
  • Contributors
  • Index

Subjects

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