Black Writing, Culture, and the State in Latin America

A thorough and in-depth look at Afro-Hispanic cultural life in Latin America

Imagine the tension that existed between the emerging nations and governments throughout the Latin American world and the cultural life of former enslaved Africans and their descendants. A world of cultural production, in the form of literature, poetry, art, music, and eventually film, would often simultaneously contravene or cooperate with the newly established order of Latin American nations negotiating independence and a new political and cultural balance. InBlack Writing, Culture, and the State in Latin America, Jerome Branche presents the reader with the complex landscape of art and literature among Afro-Hispanic and Latin artists. Branche and his contributors describe individuals such as Juan Francisco Manzano, who wrote an autobiography on the slave experience in Cuba during the nineteenth century. The reader finds a thriving Afro-Hispanic theatrical presence throughout Latin America and even across the Atlantic. The role of black women in poetry and literature comes to the forefront in the Caribbean, presenting a powerful reminder of the diversity that defines the region.

All too often, the disciplines of film studies, literary criticism, and art history ignore the opportunity to collaborate in a dialogue. Branche and his contributors present a unified approach, however, suggesting that cultural production should not be viewed narrowly, especially when studying the achievements of the Afro-Latin world.

Chapter 1: The Altar, the Oath and the Body of Christ: Ritual Poetics and Cuban Racial Politics of 1844, by Matthew Pettway
Chapter 2: Seeking Acceptance from Society and the State: Poems from Cuba's Black Press, 1882-1889, by Marveta Ryan
Chapter 3: Imagining the "New Black (Subject):" Ethical Transformations and Raciality in the Post-Revolutionary Cuban Nation, by Odette Casamayor-Cisneros
Chapter 4: Realism in Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Drama, by Elisa Rizo
Chapter 5: Bojaya in Colombian Theater: Kilele: A Drama of Memory and Resistance, by Maria Mercedes Jaramillo
Chapter 6: Uprising Textualities of the Americas: Slavery, Migration, and the Nation in Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Women's Narrative, by Lesley Feracho
Chapter 7: Disrobing Narcissus: Race, Difference and Dominance (Mayra Santos Febres' Nuestra senora de la noche Revisits the Puerto Rican National Allegory), by Jerome Branche
Chapter 8: Bilingualism, Blackness, and Belonging: The Racial and Generational Politics of Linguistic Transnationalism in Panama, by Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo
Chapter 9: Racial Consciousness, Place, and Identity in Selected Afro-Mexican Oral Poems, by Paulette Ramsay
Chapter 10: Afro-Uruguayan Culture and Legitimation: Candombe and Poetry, by Melva Persico
Chapter 11: Quilombismo and the Afro-Brazilian Quest for Citizenship, by Niyi Afolabi
Chapter 12: (W)riting Collective Memory (De)Spite State: Decolonial Practices of Existence in Ecuador, by Catherine Walsh with Juan Garcia Salazar