SUNY series, Afro-Latinx Futures – serie

The first volume in English to explore the cultural impact of Haiti on the surrounding Spanish-speaking nations of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.As a Francophone nation, Haiti is seldom studied in conjunction with its Spanish-speaking Caribbean neighbors. Racialized Visions challenges the notion that linguistic difference has kept the populations of these countries apart, instead highlighting ongoing exchanges between their writers, artists, and thinkers. Centering Haiti in this conversation also makes explicit the role that race-and, more specifically, anti-blackness-has played both in the region and in academic studies of it. Following the Revolution and Independence in 1804, Haiti was conflated with blackness. Spanish colonial powers used racist representations of Haiti to threaten their holdings in the Atlantic Ocean. In the years since, white elites in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico upheld Haiti as a symbol of barbarism and savagery. Racialized Visions powerfully refutes this symbolism. Across twelve essays, contributors demonstrate how cultural producers in these countries have resignified Haiti to mean liberation. An introduction and conclusion by the editor, Vanessa K. Valdés, as well as foreword by Myriam J. A. Chancy, provide valuable historical context and an overview of Afro-Latinx studies and its futures.

The first volume in English to explore the cultural impact of Haiti on the surrounding Spanish-speaking nations of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.As a Francophone nation, Haiti is seldom studied in conjunction with its Spanish-speaking Caribbean neighbors. Racialized Visions challenges the notion that linguistic difference has kept the populations of these countries apart, instead highlighting ongoing exchanges between their writers, artists, and thinkers. Centering Haiti in this conversation also makes explicit the role that race-and, more specifically, anti-blackness-has played both in the region and in academic studies of it. Following the Revolution and Independence in 1804, Haiti was conflated with blackness. Spanish colonial powers used racist representations of Haiti to threaten their holdings in the Atlantic Ocean. In the years since, white elites in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico upheld Haiti as a symbol of barbarism and savagery. Racialized Visions powerfully refutes this symbolism. Across twelve essays, contributors demonstrate how cultural producers in these countries have resignified Haiti to mean liberation. An introduction and conclusion by the editor, Vanessa K. Valdés, as well as foreword by Myriam J. A. Chancy, provide valuable historical context and an overview of Afro-Latinx studies and its futures.

Evocative, innovative ethnography of spiritual practices and forms of queer, black, and indigenous life in the Dominican Republic.2021 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Winner of the 2021 Gregory Bateson Book Prize presented by the Society for Cultural Anthropology Winner of the 2020 Ruth Benedict Prize presented by the Association for Queer Anthropology Theoretically wide-ranging and deeply personal and poetic, Queer Freedom : Black Sovereignty is based on more than three years of fieldwork in the Dominican Republic. Ana-Maurine Lara draws on her engagement in traditional ceremonies, observations of national Catholic celebrations, and interviews with activists from peasant, feminist, and LGBT communities to reframe contemporary conversations about queerness and blackness. The result is a rich ethnography of the ways criollo spiritual practices challenge gender and racial binaries and manifest what Lara characterizes as a shared desire for decolonization.Queer Freedom : Black Sovereignty is also a ceremonial ofrenda, or offering, in its own right. At its heart is a fundamental question: How can we enable "queer : black" life in all its forms, and what would it mean to be "free : sovereign" in the twenty-first century? Calling on the reader to join her in exploring possible answers, Lara maintains that the analogy between these terms-queerness and blackness, freedom and sovereignty-is necessarily incomplete and unresolved, to be determined only by ongoing processes of embodied, relational knowledge production. Queer Freedom : Black Sovereignty thus follows figures such as Sylvia Wynter, María Lugones, M. Jacqui Alexander, Édouard Glissant, Mark Rifkin, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde in working to theorize a potential roadmap to decolonization.

Evocative, innovative ethnography of spiritual practices and forms of queer, black, and indigenous life in the Dominican Republic.2021 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Winner of the 2021 Gregory Bateson Book Prize presented by the Society for Cultural Anthropology Winner of the 2020 Ruth Benedict Prize presented by the Association for Queer Anthropology Theoretically wide-ranging and deeply personal and poetic, Queer Freedom : Black Sovereignty is based on more than three years of fieldwork in the Dominican Republic. Ana-Maurine Lara draws on her engagement in traditional ceremonies, observations of national Catholic celebrations, and interviews with activists from peasant, feminist, and LGBT communities to reframe contemporary conversations about queerness and blackness. The result is a rich ethnography of the ways criollo spiritual practices challenge gender and racial binaries and manifest what Lara characterizes as a shared desire for decolonization.Queer Freedom : Black Sovereignty is also a ceremonial ofrenda, or offering, in its own right. At its heart is a fundamental question: How can we enable "queer : black" life in all its forms, and what would it mean to be "free : sovereign" in the twenty-first century? Calling on the reader to join her in exploring possible answers, Lara maintains that the analogy between these terms-queerness and blackness, freedom and sovereignty-is necessarily incomplete and unresolved, to be determined only by ongoing processes of embodied, relational knowledge production. Queer Freedom : Black Sovereignty thus follows figures such as Sylvia Wynter, María Lugones, M. Jacqui Alexander, Édouard Glissant, Mark Rifkin, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde in working to theorize a potential roadmap to decolonization.

Reevaluates the significance of iconic Afro-Brazilian figures, from slavery to post-abolition.Drawing on historical and cultural approaches to race relations, Identities in Flux examines iconic Afro-Brazilian figures and theorizes how they have been appropriated to either support or contest a utopian vision of multiculturalism. Zumbi dos Palmares, the leader of a runaway slave community in the seventeenth century, is shown not as an anti-Brazilian rebel but as a symbol of Black consciousness and anti-colonial resistance. Xica da Silva, an eighteenth-century mixed-race enslaved woman who "married" her master and has been seen as a licentious mulatta, questions gendered stereotypes of so-called racial democracy. Manuel Querino, whose ethnographic studies have been ignored and virtually unknown for much of the twentieth century, is put on par with more widely known African American trailblazers such as W. E. B. Du Bois. Niyi Afolabi draws out the intermingling influences of Yoruba and Classical Greek mythologies in Brazilian representations of the carnivalesque Black Orpheus, while his analysis of City of God focuses on the growing centrality of the ghetto, or favela, as a theme and producer of culture in the early twenty-first-century Brazilian urban scene. Ultimately, Afolabi argues, the identities of these figures are not fixed, but rather inhabit a fluid terrain of ideological and political struggle, challenging the idealistic notion that racial hybridity has eliminated racial discrimination in Brazil.

Reevaluates the significance of iconic Afro-Brazilian figures, from slavery to post-abolition.Drawing on historical and cultural approaches to race relations, Identities in Flux examines iconic Afro-Brazilian figures and theorizes how they have been appropriated to either support or contest a utopian vision of multiculturalism. Zumbi dos Palmares, the leader of a runaway slave community in the seventeenth century, is shown not as an anti-Brazilian rebel but as a symbol of Black consciousness and anti-colonial resistance. Xica da Silva, an eighteenth-century mixed-race enslaved woman who "married" her master and has been seen as a licentious mulatta, questions gendered stereotypes of so-called racial democracy. Manuel Querino, whose ethnographic studies have been ignored and virtually unknown for much of the twentieth century, is put on par with more widely known African American trailblazers such as W. E. B. Du Bois. Niyi Afolabi draws out the intermingling influences of Yoruba and Classical Greek mythologies in Brazilian representations of the carnivalesque Black Orpheus, while his analysis of City of God focuses on the growing centrality of the ghetto, or favela, as a theme and producer of culture in the early twenty-first-century Brazilian urban scene. Ultimately, Afolabi argues, the identities of these figures are not fixed, but rather inhabit a fluid terrain of ideological and political struggle, challenging the idealistic notion that racial hybridity has eliminated racial discrimination in Brazil.

A critical view of race relations on the island of Puerto Rico from 1898 to 1965.Drops of Inclusivity examines race and racism on the island of Puerto Rico by combining a wide-angle historical narrative with the individual stories of Black Puerto Ricans. While some of these Afro-Boricuas, such as Roberto Clemente and Ruth Fernández, are well known, others, such as Cecilia Orta and Juan Falú Zarzuela, have been largely forgotten, if remembered at all. Individually and collectively, their words and lives speak to the persistent power of racial hierarchies and responses to them across periods, from the Spanish-American War at the turn of the twentieth century to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s visit to the island in the early 1960s. Drawing on rich archival research, Milagros Denis-Rosario shows how Afro-Boricuas denounced, navigated, and negotiated racism in the fields of education, law enforcement, literature, music, the military, performance, politics, and more. Each instance of self-determination marks a gain in inclusivity-gota a gota, or drop by drop, as the saying goes in Puerto Rico. This study pays homage to them.

A critical view of race relations on the island of Puerto Rico from 1898 to 1965.Drops of Inclusivity examines race and racism on the island of Puerto Rico by combining a wide-angle historical narrative with the individual stories of Black Puerto Ricans. While some of these Afro-Boricuas, such as Roberto Clemente and Ruth Fernández, are well known, others, such as Cecilia Orta and Juan Falú Zarzuela, have been largely forgotten, if remembered at all. Individually and collectively, their words and lives speak to the persistent power of racial hierarchies and responses to them across periods, from the Spanish-American War at the turn of the twentieth century to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s visit to the island in the early 1960s. Drawing on rich archival research, Milagros Denis-Rosario shows how Afro-Boricuas denounced, navigated, and negotiated racism in the fields of education, law enforcement, literature, music, the military, performance, politics, and more. Each instance of self-determination marks a gain in inclusivity-gota a gota, or drop by drop, as the saying goes in Puerto Rico. This study pays homage to them.

Maps manifestations of the sacred and religious syncretism in Afro-Brazilian cultural forms.Although Brazil is home to the largest African diaspora, the religions of its African descendants have often been syncretized and submerged, first under the force of colonialism and enslavement and later under the spurious banner of a harmonious national Brazilian character. Relocating the Sacred argues that these religions nevertheless have been preserved and manifested in a strategic corpus of shifting masks and masquerades of Afro-Brazilian identity. Following the re-Africanization process and black consciousness movement of the 1970s to 1990s, Afro-Brazilians have questioned racial democracy, seeing how its claim to harmony actually dispossesses them of political power. By embracing African deities as a source of creative inspiration and resistance, Afro-Brazilians have appropriated syncretism as a means of not only popularizing African culture but also decolonizing themselves from the past shame of slavery. This book maps the role of African heritage in-and relocation of the sacred to-three sites of Brazilian cultural production: ritual altars, literature, and carnival culture.

Maps manifestations of the sacred and religious syncretism in Afro-Brazilian cultural forms.Although Brazil is home to the largest African diaspora, the religions of its African descendants have often been syncretized and submerged, first under the force of colonialism and enslavement and later under the spurious banner of a harmonious national Brazilian character. Relocating the Sacred argues that these religions nevertheless have been preserved and manifested in a strategic corpus of shifting masks and masquerades of Afro-Brazilian identity. Following the re-Africanization process and black consciousness movement of the 1970s to 1990s, Afro-Brazilians have questioned racial democracy, seeing how its claim to harmony actually dispossesses them of political power. By embracing African deities as a source of creative inspiration and resistance, Afro-Brazilians have appropriated syncretism as a means of not only popularizing African culture but also decolonizing themselves from the past shame of slavery. This book maps the role of African heritage in-and relocation of the sacred to-three sites of Brazilian cultural production: ritual altars, literature, and carnival culture.

Establishes the central role of Afro-Puerto Ricans in the island's history and the creation of its capital city, San Juan.Originally published in Spanish in 1985 as part of a book series commissioned by Banco Popular, this slim volume makes an invaluable contribution to the history of Black people in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean more broadly. Today, San Mateo de Cangrejos is known as Santurce-a stylish district in the capital of San Juan, birthplace of Harlem Renaissance intellectual and collector Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, and home of the Santurce Cangrejeros for which baseball legends Roberto Clemente and Willie Mays once played. Gilberto Aponte Torres's brief yet transformative history is not about the feats of such "great men" but rather the "human foundations" of this unique municipality. San Mateo de Cangrejos was founded in the seventeenth century by cimarrones, or maroons, who were fleeing enslavement on neighboring islands and were later recognized as free by local authorities. Never losing sight of the significance of this fact, Aponte Torres details the religious life of Cangrejos, its economic and urban development, demography, military contributions, and eventual annexation by San Juan in 1862. Thoughtfully translated by Karen Juanita Carrillo, the English edition of San Mateo de Cangrejos includes photographs, a glossary, and other new features to help situate readers and further illuminate the deep roots of Black culture on the island.

Establishes the central role of Afro-Puerto Ricans in the island's history and the creation of its capital city, San Juan.Originally published in Spanish in 1985 as part of a book series commissioned by Banco Popular, this slim volume makes an invaluable contribution to the history of Black people in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean more broadly. Today, San Mateo de Cangrejos is known as Santurce-a stylish district in the capital of San Juan, birthplace of Harlem Renaissance intellectual and collector Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, and home of the Santurce Cangrejeros for which baseball legends Roberto Clemente and Willie Mays once played. Gilberto Aponte Torres's brief yet transformative history is not about the feats of such "great men" but rather the "human foundations" of this unique municipality. San Mateo de Cangrejos was founded in the seventeenth century by cimarrones, or maroons, who were fleeing enslavement on neighboring islands and were later recognized as free by local authorities. Never losing sight of the significance of this fact, Aponte Torres details the religious life of Cangrejos, its economic and urban development, demography, military contributions, and eventual annexation by San Juan in 1862. Thoughtfully translated by Karen Juanita Carrillo, the English edition of San Mateo de Cangrejos includes photographs, a glossary, and other new features to help situate readers and further illuminate the deep roots of Black culture on the island.

Explores the role of print media in conversations about race and belonging across Central America.Black in Print examines the role of narrative, from traditional writing to new media, in conversations about race and belonging in the isthmus. It argues that the production, circulation, and consumption of stories has led to a trans-isthmian imaginary that splits the region along racial and geographic lines into a white-mestizo Pacific coast, an Indigenous core, and a Black Caribbean. Across five chapters, Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar identifies a series of key moments in the history of the development of this imaginary: Independence, Intervention, Cold-War, Post-Revolutionary, and Digital Age. Gómez Menjívar's analysis ranges from literary beacons such as Rubén Darío and Miguel Ángel Asturias to less studied intellectuals such as Wingston González and Carl Rigby. The result is a fresh approach to race, the region, and its literature. Black in Print understands Central American Blackness as a set of shifting coordinates plotted on the axes of language, geography, and time as it moves through print media.

Explores the role of print media in conversations about race and belonging across Central America.Black in Print examines the role of narrative, from traditional writing to new media, in conversations about race and belonging in the isthmus. It argues that the production, circulation, and consumption of stories has led to a trans-isthmian imaginary that splits the region along racial and geographic lines into a white-mestizo Pacific coast, an Indigenous core, and a Black Caribbean. Across five chapters, Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar identifies a series of key moments in the history of the development of this imaginary: Independence, Intervention, Cold-War, Post-Revolutionary, and Digital Age. Gómez Menjívar's analysis ranges from literary beacons such as Rubén Darío and Miguel Ángel Asturias to less studied intellectuals such as Wingston González and Carl Rigby. The result is a fresh approach to race, the region, and its literature. Black in Print understands Central American Blackness as a set of shifting coordinates plotted on the axes of language, geography, and time as it moves through print media.

Explores the feminist spiritual and emotional politics of literary and cultural works by Black Caribbean women.Feminist Spiritualities aims to complicate contemporary debates surrounding Black/Latinx experiences within a critical framework of decolonial thought, women of color feminisms, politicized emotional structures, and anti-imperial politics. Joshua R. Deckman considers literary and cultural productions from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, and their diasporas in the United States, exploring epistemic spaces that have historically been marked as irrational and inconsequential for the production of knowledge-including social media posts, song lyrics, public writings, speeches, and personal interviews. Analyzing works by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Mayra Santos-Febres, Rita Indiana Hernández, Ana-Maurine Lara, Elizabeth Acevedo, María Teresa Fernández, Nitty Scott, Lxs Krudxs Cubensi, and Ibeyi, Deckman shows how these authors develop afro-epistemologies grounded in Caribbean feminist spiritualities and manifest a commitment to finding joy and love in difference. Literary, anthropological, and more, Feminist Spiritualities weaves through a series of fields and methodologies in an undisciplined way to contribute new close readings of recent works and fresh assessments of well-known ones.

Explores the feminist spiritual and emotional politics of literary and cultural works by Black Caribbean women.Feminist Spiritualities aims to complicate contemporary debates surrounding Black/Latinx experiences within a critical framework of decolonial thought, women of color feminisms, politicized emotional structures, and anti-imperial politics. Joshua R. Deckman considers literary and cultural productions from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, and their diasporas in the United States, exploring epistemic spaces that have historically been marked as irrational and inconsequential for the production of knowledge-including social media posts, song lyrics, public writings, speeches, and personal interviews. Analyzing works by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Mayra Santos-Febres, Rita Indiana Hernández, Ana-Maurine Lara, Elizabeth Acevedo, María Teresa Fernández, Nitty Scott, Lxs Krudxs Cubensi, and Ibeyi, Deckman shows how these authors develop afro-epistemologies grounded in Caribbean feminist spiritualities and manifest a commitment to finding joy and love in difference. Literary, anthropological, and more, Feminist Spiritualities weaves through a series of fields and methodologies in an undisciplined way to contribute new close readings of recent works and fresh assessments of well-known ones.

Considers how popular Haitian films not only provide entertainment but also help audiences in Haiti and the diaspora think through daily challenges.Honorable Mention, for the 2025 Book Prize presented by the Haitian Studies AssociationIn Haitian Creole, bay lodyans means to tell stories to an audience, and more generally, to entertain. This book is the first to analyze popular contemporary Haitian films, looking especially at how they respond to the needs and desires of Haitian audiences in and beyond Haiti. Produced between 2000 and 2018 and largely shot with digital cameras and sometimes cellphones, these films focus on the complexities of community, nostalgia, belonging, identity, and the emotional landscapes of exile and diaspora. They reflect sociopolitical and cultural issues related to family, language, im/migration, religion, gender, sexuality, and economic hardship. Using storytelling and other less traditionally "academic" techniques, Cécile Accilien advances Haitian epistemological frameworks. Bay Lodyans integrates terms and concepts from Haitian culture, such as jerans and kafou (derived from the French words for "to manage" and "crossroads," respectively) and includes interviews with Haitian filmmakers, actors, and scholars in order to challenge the dominance of Western theoretical approaches and perspectives.

Considers how popular Haitian films not only provide entertainment but also help audiences in Haiti and the diaspora think through daily challenges.Honorable Mention, for the 2025 Book Prize presented by the Haitian Studies AssociationIn Haitian Creole, bay lodyans means to tell stories to an audience, and more generally, to entertain. This book is the first to analyze popular contemporary Haitian films, looking especially at how they respond to the needs and desires of Haitian audiences in and beyond Haiti. Produced between 2000 and 2018 and largely shot with digital cameras and sometimes cellphones, these films focus on the complexities of community, nostalgia, belonging, identity, and the emotional landscapes of exile and diaspora. They reflect sociopolitical and cultural issues related to family, language, im/migration, religion, gender, sexuality, and economic hardship. Using storytelling and other less traditionally "academic" techniques, Cécile Accilien advances Haitian epistemological frameworks. Bay Lodyans integrates terms and concepts from Haitian culture, such as jerans and kafou (derived from the French words for "to manage" and "crossroads," respectively) and includes interviews with Haitian filmmakers, actors, and scholars in order to challenge the dominance of Western theoretical approaches and perspectives.

A moving tale of contemporary Haiti told through the intersecting lives of four young people struggling to hold on to hope and their identities amid a militarized coup in the early 1990s.Gold Winner of the 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the LGBTQ+ Fiction category Vivid and poignant, Spirit of Haiti follows the intersecting lives of four young witnesses to military-ruled Haiti during the early 1990s. Léah, an apparition, rises from the sea like a siren one morning off the coast of Cap Haitien, clothes untouched by water, blue stones wrapped around her neck, eyes blind to light. Soon to be a mother, Carmen returns to Haiti from Canada as if responding to the call of the vodou spirits. Alexis flees the island in search of a land without strife. Finally, there is Philippe, who walks the northern hills alert to ancestral voices still haunting its peaks and valleys. Doing what he must to get by in the tourist trade and now weakened by illness, he struggles to maintain spiritual dignity and a hold on hope. First published in 2003 and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers First Book Prize in the Caribbean and Canada region, Spirit of Haiti is a novel about confronting the failings of the human heart and the triumph of memory over despair.

A deeply researched, pathbreaking collection of original and newly translated essays on slavery in Spain, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico.This groundbreaking volume addresses the enslavement and experiences of Black Africans in Spain and the Spanish Caribbean, particularly La Española (or Hispaniola) and Puerto Rico, two of the earliest colonies. Spanning nearly four hundred years and rooted in extensive archival research, Transatlantic Bondage sheds light on a number of relatively underexamined topics in these locales, including the development and application of slavery laws, disobedience and its consequences, migration, gender, family, lifestyle, and community building among the free Black population and white allies. In bringing together new and recent work by leading scholars, including two essays translated into English here for the first time, the book is also a call for further study of slavery in the Spanish Caribbean and its impact on the region.

A deeply researched, pathbreaking collection of original and newly translated essays on slavery in Spain, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico.This groundbreaking volume addresses the enslavement and experiences of Black Africans in Spain and the Spanish Caribbean, particularly La Española (or Hispaniola) and Puerto Rico, two of the earliest colonies. Spanning nearly four hundred years and rooted in extensive archival research, Transatlantic Bondage sheds light on a number of relatively underexamined topics in these locales, including the development and application of slavery laws, disobedience and its consequences, migration, gender, family, lifestyle, and community building among the free Black population and white allies. In bringing together new and recent work by leading scholars, including two essays translated into English here for the first time, the book is also a call for further study of slavery in the Spanish Caribbean and its impact on the region.

Centers Cuban cinema to explore how films produced in Havana or Hollywood differently represent Black resistance to slavery.From Havana to Hollywood examines the presence or absence of Black resistance to slavery in feature films produced in either Havana or Hollywood-including Gillo Pontecorvo's Burn!, neglected masterpieces by Cuban auteurs Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Sergio Giral, and Steve McQueen's Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave. Philip Kaisary argues that, with rare exceptions, the representation of Black agency in Hollywood has always been, and remains, taboo. Contrastingly, Cuban cinema foregrounds Black agency, challenging the ways in which slavery has been misremembered and misunderstood in North America and Europe. With powerful, richly theorized readings, the book shows how Cuban cinema especially recreates the past to fuel visions of liberation and asks how the medium of film might contribute to a renewal of emancipatory politics today.

Centers Cuban cinema to explore how films produced in Havana or Hollywood differently represent Black resistance to slavery.From Havana to Hollywood examines the presence or absence of Black resistance to slavery in feature films produced in either Havana or Hollywood-including Gillo Pontecorvo's Burn!, neglected masterpieces by Cuban auteurs Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Sergio Giral, and Steve McQueen's Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave. Philip Kaisary argues that, with rare exceptions, the representation of Black agency in Hollywood has always been, and remains, taboo. Contrastingly, Cuban cinema foregrounds Black agency, challenging the ways in which slavery has been misremembered and misunderstood in North America and Europe. With powerful, richly theorized readings, the book shows how Cuban cinema especially recreates the past to fuel visions of liberation and asks how the medium of film might contribute to a renewal of emancipatory politics today.

Examines the reception of Brazil's most-canonized writer in the United States to shed light on questions of Blackness and hemispheric American experience.Considered a genius in his own lifetime, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) is Brazil's most canonized writer. Yet, he remains a contested and even enigmatic figure to readers in Brazil and abroad, his relative silence on slavery leaving him vulnerable to charges of aspirations to whiteness. Machado de Assis, Blackness, and the Americas reconsiders this issue by exploring how his prose fiction has been received in the United States. In seven original essays, contributors re-examine his novels and short stories, as well as photographs of the writer, in order to better understand the strategies he employed to navigate Brazil's literary scene as a man of African descent. Framed by a contextualizing introduction and an afterword in the form of a conversation between the editors, the volume speaks to and with our own historical moment and the realities of Black lives in the Americas over the course of the last two centuries.

Examines the reception of Brazil's most-canonized writer in the United States to shed light on questions of Blackness and hemispheric American experience.Considered a genius in his own lifetime, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) is Brazil's most canonized writer. Yet, he remains a contested and even enigmatic figure to readers in Brazil and abroad, his relative silence on slavery leaving him vulnerable to charges of aspirations to whiteness. Machado de Assis, Blackness, and the Americas reconsiders this issue by exploring how his prose fiction has been received in the United States. In seven original essays, contributors re-examine his novels and short stories, as well as photographs of the writer, in order to better understand the strategies he employed to navigate Brazil's literary scene as a man of African descent. Framed by a contextualizing introduction and an afterword in the form of a conversation between the editors, the volume speaks to and with our own historical moment and the realities of Black lives in the Americas over the course of the last two centuries.

Explores how Afro-Cuban women's visual art challenges dominant narratives of race, gender, and identity.Gendered Aesthetics of Blackness delves deeply into the visual artistry and activism of Afro-Cuban women in Cuba and the United States. Influential in their communities yet overlooked in the mainstream art world and academic discourse, Harmonia Rosales, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Belkis Ayón, and Susana Pilar practice what Rosita Scerbo calls "Decolonial AfroARTivism." These women use their art to challenge and disrupt dominant narratives, reclaim their identities and cultural heritage, and advocate for social justice. In centering their voices and meticulously analyzing their works, Scerbo not only enriches our understanding of Afro-Cuban visual culture but also pushes the boundaries of research. Groundbreaking in its decolonial approach and form, Gendered Aesthetics of Blackness engages a wide swath of sources and includes two interviews, with Rosales and with curator and popular educator Diarenis Calderon Tartabull.