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.
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
Index
