Jill Toliver Richardson THE AFRO-LATIN@ EXPERIENCE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN L I T E R AT U R E AND CULTURE Engaging Blackness Afro-Latin@ Diasporas The Afro-Latin@ Diasporas Book Series publishes scholarly and creative writing on the African diasporic experience in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States The Series includes books which address all aspects of Afro-Latin@ life and cultural expression throughout the hemisphere, with a strong focus on Afro-Latin@s in the United States This Series is the first-of-its-kind to combine such a broad range of topics, including religion, race, transnational identity, history, literature, music and the arts, social and cultural theory, biography, class and economic relations, gender, sexuality, sociology, politics, and migration More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14759 Jill Toliver Richardson The Afro-Latin@ Experience in Contemporary American Literature and Culture Engaging Blackness Jill Toliver Richardson Department of English Borough of Manhattan Community College Brooklyn, New York, USA Afro-Latin@ Diasporas ISBN 978-3-319-31920-9 ISBN 978-3-319-31921-6 DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31921-6 (eBook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952793 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author (s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made Series logo inspired by “Le Marron Inconnu” by Haitian sculptor Albert Mangones Cover illustration: © Nikada / Getty Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland To my amazing husband, Cy, and our beautiful girls, Naomi and Camille ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank everyone who has helped support me during this long process Cy, Naomi, and Camille for ample support and understanding My parents, Paul and Jane, brother, Paul Jr., and in-laws, Van and Ged, for their encouragement along the way I would like to thank the late Juan Flores for all of his inspiration and guidance over the years Miriam Jiménez Román and Natasha GordonChipembere for taking a chance on my work Barbara Webb for doing so much over the years including calling me when I was absent for too long David Kazanjian for being so generous with his time Robert ReidPharr for always believing in my capabilities Thank you to the following for reading chapters and supporting me in a variety of necessary ways: James Ford, Michelle Wright, Candice Jenkins, Kathryn Quinn-Sanchez, Richard Perez, Christa Baiada, Mariposa, Racquel Goodison, Ivelisse Rodriguez, Jan Stahl, Jonathan Gray, Phil Stone, and Joyce Harte To my girls Mariama Covington Boone, Naima Wong, Ericka Ligon, Svetlana Bochman, Lisa Torre, Natalye Kennedy, Hollie Harper, Elizabeth Vilarino, Reggie Katagiri, Caitlin Lang, and Kibi Anderson for taking me out, organizing playdates, and listening I would also like to acknowledge the UNCF/Mellon Mays Fellowship Program, Cynthia Spence, and the late Rudolph Byrd for starting me on this journey and the Mellon Mays Fellowship Program family for helping to keep me going all of these years Also, thank you to the Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship and the CUNY Scholar Incentive Award for providing me with the crucial time and financial support needed to complete this project vii CONTENTS Introduction Notes 26 Enduring the Curse: The Legacy of Intergenerational Trauma in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Notes 27 48 Haunting Legacies: Forging Afro-Dominican Women’s Identity in Loida Maritza Pérez’s Geographies of Home Notes 49 72 “Boricua, Moreno”: Laying Claim to Blackness in the Post-Civil Rights Era Notes 73 97 Afro-Latin Magical Realism, Historical Memory, Identity, and Space in Angie Cruz’s Soledad and Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints Notes 99 119 ix WORKS CITED 155 Reader: History and Culture in 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Faris, 1–11 Durham: Duke University Press [Print] INDEX A adelantar la raza, 18, 19, 21 African-American community, 1–3, 14, 25, 77–9, 84, 91, 98, 127, 128 African-American guide, 19 African-Americans, 1–4, 14, 17, 19–22, 25, 34, 35, 67, 77–80, 84, 90–4, 96, 98n4, 127–9, 140, 152 African diaspora, 2, 3, 5, 12, 19, 39, 66, 75, 77, 82, 83, 104, 119, 134, 147–50, 152 African diaspora women, 12 African heritage, suppressed, 29 African, Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican Diasporas, 16 Afro-Caribbean spirituality, 21, 25, 101, 102, 104, 110, 119, 134 Afro-Cuban-American, 26, 121, 122, 134, 141, 142, 151 Afro-Cuban American identity, 122, 142 Afro-Cuban American literature, 121 Afro-Cuban American writers, 26, 141 Afro-Cuban identity, 26, 129, 136 Afro-Cuban memory, 139 Afro-Dominican, 4, 10, 24, 25, 26n4, 35, 46, 47, 49–72, 110, 112, 117, 119, 150 Afro-Dominican immigrant women, 50, 52, 71 Afro-Dominican spiritual lineage, 56 Afro-Dominican Women’s Identity, 24, 25, 49–72 Afro-Hispanic, 147, 148, 150, 152n1 Afro-Latinidad, 26, 143–52 Afro-Puerto Rican, 2, 4, 10, 14, 18, 25, 73, 74, 76–8, 79–81, 84, 85, 90–2, 94–7, 122, 128, 150, 152n2 Afro-Puerto Rican women, 18, 95 Aida Cartagena Portalatín, 147 AIDS, 4, 50, 61, 76, 93 Note Page number followed by ‘n’ refers to endnotes © The Author (s) 2016 J.T Richardson, The Afro-Latin@ Experience in Contemporary American Literature and Culture, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31921-6 163 164 INDEX Aisha Khan, 32 Algarín, Miguel, alienation, 16, 20, 35, 47, 62, 71, 90, 91, 103, 108 alternative community, 20, 22, 25, 103 alternative home, 4, 6, 10, 11, 14, 78, 79, 97, 105, 144, 145 Alvarez, Julia, 3, 39, 102 Alzheimer’s, 26, 124, 126, 130, 138, 139 American Dream, 4, 49, 55 American invasion of the Dominican Republic (1965), 39 American military, 29, 111, 112 American national community, 4, 5, 14, 22, 143 American national identity, 5, 7, 10 American nationalism, American racism, 14, 19, 26, 79, 81 Anderson, Benedict, 10 Angie Chabram Dernersesian, anti-Trujillo hero, 61, 66 Appadurai, Arjun, assimilate, 10, 13, 66, 78, 80–3, 128 Atlantic Slave Trade, 130, 140 B Balaguer, Joaquín, 39 Batista, Fulgencio, 136, 137 Beauty standards, Anglo-American, mainstream white beauty standards, 63, 64 Bhabha, Homi, 111, 119n1 birds crow, 139 owl feather, 60, 64 pigeons, 60, 64 black body, 20, 21, 30, 34, 89, 113 black British youth, black diasporic identity, 91 black identity, 5, 17, 19–21, 66, 68, 78, 90, 135, 141, 148, 151 black male body, 21, 22 black male identity, 77 black men, 65, 67, 77, 94, 96, 98n5 blackness, 3, 17–20, 25, 29, 30, 50, 64, 65, 72n2, 73–98, 103, 104, 119, 136, 141, 143, 147, 151 black racial consciousness, 17, 19 black women writers, 15, 149 Bling, 96 boundary crossing, 22, 30, 32, 72n3, 79, 144, 146 breast cancer, 35, 48n5 Brooks, Gwendolyn, 96 bruja, 107, 134 Butler, Judith, 123 C Caliban, 32, 48n4 cane fields, 30–2, 37, 40–3, 48n3, 135, 136 Caribbean homeland, 3, 4, 8, 10, 13–16, 21, 34, 36, 37, 46, 100, 105, 106, 143, 145, 146 Carole Boyce Davies, 12, 50 Carrillo, H.G., 26, 121–42, 144 Castro, Fidel, 136, 138 chabine, 32 Charts a Caribbean landscape, Mapping of Caribbean geography, 61 Cimarrónes, 134, 136 collective memory, 44, 107, 108, 110, 119 colonialism, 6, 23–5, 27, 32, 34–6, 40, 44, 47, 99, 104, 108, 110–13, 115, 147–9 colonization, 18, 22–4, 27, 28, 36, 48n1, 95, 131, 133, 144, 145, 150 colonized subjects, 5, 6, 111 INDEX comic books, 34, 45 community building, 50 contaminated, 65, 73 contesting blackness, 20 counter narratives, 33 crack-cocaine, 4, 76 crack era, 76, 78, 92 creole, 32 Cruz, Angie, 14, 23, 25, 26n4, 48n6, 99–119, 145 Cuban American community, 123, 125 Cuban-American identity, 138, 142 Cuban diasporic community, 122 Cuban history, 125, 133, 136 Cuban Revolution (1959), 121, 125, 126, 133, 134, 136, 138, 142, 142n3 curse, 24, 27–48, 145 D Danticat, Edwidge, 34, 37, 48n3 dark skin, 20, 29, 30, 73, 135 David Lamb Do Plátanos Go wit’ Collard Greens?, 19 Denial of blackness, 17–19, 141, 143 Derby, Lauren, 39 destabilization of urban families, Diallo, Amadou, 93 diaspora community, 10 DiaspoRican, 14, 75, 85–8 diasporic black racial consciousness, 19 diasporic consciousness, 19, 78, 80, 87, 98, 105 diasporic framework, 14, 86 diasporic identity, 5, 12, 75, 91, 122, 123, 134, 148, 149 Díaz, Junot, 14, 27–48, 145, 146 dictator, 28, 33, 37, 40 dictator novel, 28 displacement, 5–7, 15, 25, 33, 34, 36, 47, 62, 70, 84, 95, 104, 138 165 divergent sexuality, 24 Divided Borders, 75 domestic space, 52, 56, 60, 100 Dominican-American community, 10, 50, 102 Dominican American identity, 51, 61 Dominican history, 23, 28, 43, 47 Dominican Republic, 4, 10, 17, 18, 23, 24, 27, 31, 32, 34–41, 45–7, 48n1, 49, 50, 53, 55–8, 60, 61, 65, 68, 72n1, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 112, 116, 118, 144, 145, 147 Dominican traditional gender roles for women, 63 Dominicanyork, 38 drug culture, 81 E East Harlem, 80, 84, 90, 97 Edouard Glissant Caribbean Discourse Selected Essays, 44 el trastorno, 123 Espiritismo, 101, 144 eternal return, 40, 41 evangelical group, 127, 128 Evelio Grillo Black Cuban, Black American: A Memoir, Evelyn Hawthorne, 24, 36 exile, 6, 15, 33, 34, 36, 121–6, 134, 136, 138, 141, 141n3 F faceless man, 30, 31, 43 female body as battleground, 28 female legacy of power, 56 Flores, Juan, 1, 11, 75, 76 fortuneteller, 114 fukú, 24, 27, 29, 31–3, 35–9, 41–5, 47, 145 166 INDEX G gang violence, gender duality, 68 George, Rosemary Marangoly, ghosts, 25, 66, 93, 99, 107, 108, 116, 118, 130, 132, 140, 144 global networks, Gloria Anzaldúa Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 53, 153 Grifa, 20, 88, 89 Guantanamera, 135 guardia, 115 Guillén, Nicolás, 147 gypsy, 114, 115 H hair, 20, 21, 35, 58, 62–5, 82, 85, 88–90, 97, 114, 118, 133 hair straightening, 89 Haitian Massacre of 1937, 22 Haitian occupation/unification of Hispaniola, 18 Haitians, 27, 102, 103 Hanna, Monica, 28, 33 Harlem, New York, 79–81, 83, 84, 86, 90, 97, 128 Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965, haunting, 24, 49–72, 144 Heredia, Juanita, 35 heroin, 83, 95 hip hop, 11, 21, 22, 76–8, 96, 97 hip hop culture, 4, 21, 25, 75–8, 96, 97 Hirsch, Marianne, 34, 38, 116 Hispaniola, 18, 27, 31, 38, 41, 47, 48n1, 145 historical legacy of sexual violation, 21 historical memory, 25, 99–119, 122, 143 historical sights of trauma, 22 historical silences, 26 historical site of violation, 31 historical trauma, 23, 27, 34, 36, 40, 41, 46, 116 historical violence, 17, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 31, 33, 37, 41, 42, 44, 46, 47, 61, 69, 70, 99, 100, 105, 110, 111, 115, 116, 119, 129, 143, 144, 148, 149 HIV/AIDS epidemic, 4, 93 Holy Ghost, 66, 140 home, 3–6, 8–17, 20, 24, 32–5, 37, 38, 46, 49–72, 74–6, 78–81, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 91, 97, 100, 102–6, 112, 114, 118, 119, 124, 126, 133, 135, 136, 139–41, 145, 146 home as a psychic space, 53 homelessness, 6, 15, 34, 49, 54, 56, 84 homesickness, 15 hybrid, 33 hybridity, 12 hyper-masculinity, 34, 47 I imagined community, 10, 51 imagined homeland, 13, 16 immigrant literature/genre, 6–8, 15, 26n2 imperialism, 27, 147 incarceration, 92, 93 Indios, 18, 51, 133 inheritance of trauma, 17 inter-generational Trauma, 24 interstitial borderland, 31, 32 J Jackson, Richard, 147, 150 James, Norberto, 147 INDEX Jesus Colon A Puerto Rican in New York, And Other Sketches, Jiménez, Blas, 147 Jorge, Angela, 18, 20 Juan Francisco Manzano, 147 Julia Alvarez How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, 102–4 K Kaplan, Caren, 33 L Ladder Conspiracy (1844), 131, 142n1 La Flaca, 136–8 language, 10, 11, 22, 26, 83, 127, 128, 144–7 Las Casas, Fray Bartolomé de, 131, 132 Latino Caribbean Transnation, 10 Laviera, Tato, 2, 74, 78 La Virgen de la Altagracia, 114, 115, 118 legacy of sexual violation, 17, 21, 28, 42, 45 legacy of trauma, 25, 37, 47 light-skin, 30, 63 López, Antonio, 122, 151 loss, 46, 56, 57, 81, 91, 122, 123, 125, 152 Luciano, Felipe, Luis, William, 3, 102, 121, 142n2, 151n1 M Machismo/Macho, 34, 39, 42 Maestra, La Sierra, 133, 135, 136 magical realism, 25, 26, 40, 99–119, 143–5 167 magical realist literary tradition, 25, 100 Malcolm X, 89, 90 Male identity: Afro-Puerto Rican and African-American, 78, 91 malleability of history, 43 mapping Caribbean geography, 14 Marcelino Arozarena, 147 marianismo, 56 Maria (Mariposa) Teresa Fernández, 20, 25, 85 marked body, 20, 24 mass media, maternal line of spirituality, 53 matrilineal authority, 60 matrilineal legacy, 21, 62 Medina, Tony, 22, 25, 76, 78, 94 memory, 13, 16, 22, 25, 26, 40–2, 44, 52, 89, 99–119, 121–44 Mendoza, Louis, migration, 6–8, 12, 15, 17, 19, 21, 25, 33, 36, 53, 56–8, 68, 99, 100, 107, 121, 141, 145 migratory experience, 6, 12, 15, 24, 49, 50, 52–4, 71 Mirabal sisters, 29, 31 Miriam Román, mobility, 4, 6, 25, 34, 74, 81, 93, 100, 106, 110–12, 119 mongoose, 32, 43 Morejón, Nancy, 147 Moreno Vega, Marta, 147 mother-daughter relationship, 17 myth making, 26 myths, 26, 49, 51, 88, 100, 114, 124, 126, 127, 129, 130, 133–6, 138, 141, 142 N narrative of resistance, 29, 47 narrative of whiteness, 30, 73 168 INDEX nation, 6–14, 16, 26n3, 28, 30, 33, 34, 36–43, 46, 47, 48n2, 51–2, 61, 71, 72n1, 79, 116, 123, 133, 134 national identity, 1, 5–7, 10, 11, 16, 25, 34, 51, 74, 121, 135–7, 141, 146 negotiating identity, 15 nigger, 19, 32, 66, 83, 91, 92 non-belonging, 14, 15, 34, 54, 79, 81, 84, 88, 150 normative history, 31, 32 North American home, 13, 14, 145 nostalgia, 16, 75, 76, 78, 86, 105 Nuyorican identity, 74, 75, 84, 85, 90, 128 Nuyorican Literary Movement, 2, 4, 73, 74, 77, 78 Nuyorican Poets Café, 4, 73, 84, 85, 90 O ocean, 149 official historical narratives, 26 official histories, 22, 46, 48n2, 129, 131, 138, 142 official narrative, 25, 51, 73, 119, 121, 124, 125, 129–32, 144 official national narratives, 22, 26, 99 one-drop rule, 150 original homeland, 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 75 outcast, 30, 34 outlaw, 21, 77, 91, 94 outlawed black male body, 22 outlaw identity, 21, 77, 91 outsider status, outsider identity, 20 P Pablo Guzmán “Before People Called Me a Spic, They Called Me a Nigger”, 19 páginas en blanco, 33, 34, 46 Palmer, Colin, 16 patriarchal norms, 37, 55 patriarchal structures, 28, 30, 47 pelo malo (bad hair), 88 Pentecostal faith, 66 Perdomo, Willie, 22, 25, 78, 90 Pérez, Loida Maritza, 14, 20, 24, 49–72, 119n2, 146 photos/photographs, 38, 39, 86, 109, 111, 113, 114, 126, 129, 132, 137 Pietri, Pedro, 2, 73, 78 Piri Thomas Down These Mean Streets, Piri Thomas “The Konk”, 89 Plácido, 131, 142n1 Playa Giron (The Bay of Pigs), 137 policing, 50, 56, 66, 70, 111 political violence, 29 post-Civil Rights era, 4, 14, 21, 22, 25, 73–98 postcolonial experience, post modern identity, preternatural powers, 17, 56, 58, 68 principle of hypodescent, 18 prostitution, 23, 95 Puerto Rican Day Parade, 90 Puerto Rican diaspora, 75, 95 Puerto Rican identity, 73–5, 78–81, 85, 86, 91, 94, 97, 128 punk identity, 35, 37 R racial integration, 4, 25 racial miscegenation, 32 Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, 18 ramifications of colonialism, 24, 44 rancid stench, 65 rape, 29, 48n3, 65, 70, 113 repression of the past, 33 resistance, 6, 7, 12, 13, 15, 26, 29, 31, 42, 47, 50, 63, 70, 71, 80, 95, 104, 119, 128, 148, 149, 151 INDEX resistance narrative, 29 return, 11–13, 16, 17, 23, 24, 26, 36–46, 52, 55, 56, 59, 61, 62, 69–71, 75, 80, 83, 84, 87, 89, 105, 108, 114, 116, 123, 124, 127, 129, 136–9, 141, 142, 144 return as narrative strategy, 36, 48n6 return to the homeland, 17, 24, 36, 45, 46, 105, 141 return to the past, 26, 124, 138, 139, 141, 142 rewriting history, 31 Rivera, Raquel, 77 Rody, Caroline, 28 rootlessness, 6, 15, 22, 47, 84, 144 Rosario, Nelly, 23, 25, 26n4, 48n6, 99–119 rupture, 21, 33, 34, 53, 58, 103, 122, 123, 134, 138 S sacred space, 14, 107, 108, 145 safe space, 55, 106, 115 Sandra Maria Esteves, 2, 78, 149 science fiction, 34, 145 search for home, 15, 16, 103 sexual assault, 37, 40, 117 sexual exploitation, 17, 113 sexual power, 38 sexual violence, 23, 24, 27, 47 sex worker, 39, 40, 107, 108, 144 Shaggy Flores, 73, 74 shame, 18, 20, 88, 89 Shankar, S., shape shift, 59, 64, 144, 145 Silvio Torres-Saillant, 6, 33, 104 slavery, 18, 23, 24, 27, 29, 36, 40, 48n1, 104, 111, 113, 116, 130, 131, 134, 136, 140, 144, 148, 149 Spanish-American War (1898), 130–2 Spanish language, 128, 146 169 Spiritual guides, healers and mediums, 26, 114, 117 Stuart Hall, 4, 11, 75, 143 subcultures hip hop, 4, 21, 25, 75–8, 96, 97 punk, 35 sci-fi, 34 subjugation, 19, 47, 50 sugar princess, 137, 138 sugar trade, 130, 135, 136 surveillance, 50, 56, 61, 66, 70, 111 syphilis, 23, 112, 114, 115 T tainted black body, 20 telepathic, 17, 145 third wave of immigration to the United States, transgender woman, 68, 114 transgress prescribed gender roles, 60 translocal, 9, 10, 26n3 transnation, 9, 10, 12 transnational and diaspora frameworks, 6, 8, 9, 33, 54 transnational and diaspora subjects, transnational and diasporic identity, transnational communities, 16 transnational consciousness, 14 transnational identities, 10 transnational networks, trauma, 17, 22–5, 27–48, 52, 61, 62, 70, 71, 100, 105, 108, 116, 118, 119, 124, 140, 141, 143, 144 traumatic rupture, 21, 34, 122 triangulation, 124, 142 triple-consciousness, 1, 17, 128 Trujillato, 25, 29, 30, 32, 39, 42, 48n2, 49–53, 55, 61, 62, 66, 70, 100 Trujillo as environment, 49 170 INDEX Trujillo-era, 50, 55, 60, 61, 69, 71 tyrannical rule, 27 U undesired black identity, 20 untimely death, 92, 93, 95, 96 upward mobility, 4, 25, 81, 93, 111 U.S occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), 23, 110 V Vázquez, David J., 27, 124 Vodun, 103, 144 W War on Drugs, 76, 92 Washington Heights, 104, 105, 109 Wendy Walters, 33 whiteness, 18, 20, 30, 73, 79, 85, 102, 103, 150 whitening, 18, 19 witness, 31, 36, 43, 44, 140 women’s bodies, 29, 30, 38, 43 Women’s sexuality, 29 Y Yambú, 140, 142n5 Yanqui soldiers, 110 Yemoja, 148, 149 ... 153 Index 163 CHAPTER Introduction The Afro- Latin@ Experience in Contemporary American Literature and Culture: Engaging Blackness examines contemporary fiction and poetry by US-based Afro- Latino/a... of the Afro- Latino/a predicament and the conflicted nature of the Afro- Latino/a experience Miriam Román and Juan Flores define Afro- Latinos/as as “people of African descent in Mexico, Central and. .. literature and, interestingly, have proposed varied interpretations of the genre, the themes, and the writers who should be included Rather than proposing a definition of Afro- Latino/a literature, Theresa