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Brings together scholars, thinkers, artists, and community leaders to question hegemonic notions of Blackness in Puerto Rico and throughout its diaspora.
Black Puerto Ricans have always been central, not peripheral, to Puerto Rican life and culture. Black Puerto Rican Studies puts forth dynamic ways of reading, writing, and researching Blackness in Puerto Rico and its diaspora. With essays and interviews spanning ecology, music, architecture, literature, reproductive health, art history, and media production, this volume interrogates national conceptions of Blackness that seek to reduce it to folklore or an ancestral past. In underscoring the interdisciplinarity of the field, Black Puerto Rican Studies celebrates a living lineage of thought, resistance, creativity, stewardship, experimentation, and vision.
"A sound and very well-researched study of critical race theory and cultural studies that provides a groundbreaking theoretical and bibliographical tool for researchers of the discipline. It incorporates well-established voices of a diverse group of scholars and their perspectives on Afro Puerto Rican studies." — Mayra Santos-Febres, Afro Diasporic and Race Studies Research Center and Virtual Archive (Centro PRAFRO), University of Puerto Rico
"A fascinating collection of material that highlights a wide range of scholarly, artistic, literary, and activist work in the field of Black Puerto Rican studies. It is this collaboration, especially the interviews with cultural workers and activists and the auto-ethnographies by artists and scholars, that makes it a unique contribution. These pieces are incredibly useful, in conjunction with one another and individually, in orienting a reader to what is happening in Black Puerto Rican studies from the perspective of various fields and artistic modes, especially visual and performance art." — Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, author of Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean, 1850–1902
Chayanne Marcano is a writer and researcher born and raised in the Bronx, New York. Vanessa K. Valdés is an independent writer, scholar, speaker, and curator. Her books include Let Spirit Speak! Cultural Journeys Through the African Diaspora; Oshun's Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas; Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg; and Racialized Visions: Haiti and the Hispanic Caribbean, all published by SUNY Press.
Acknowledgments
Introducing Black Puerto Rican Studies
Chayanne Marcano and Vanessa K. Valdés
Part One: Theoretical Interventions
1: Rendering Our Black Puerto Rican History
Vanessa K. Valdés
2: Limits and Possibilities of Theorizing Blackness in Puerto Rican Popular Music
Petra Rivera-Rideau
3: Everyday Racisms, Rabia/Rage Epistemologies, and Being Black in Urban Latin(@) America
Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores
4: NEGRAS: AFROsororidades y sueños
Bárbara I. Abadía-Rexach y Carmen Margarita Sánchez De León
5: NEGRAS: AFROsororidades y sueños (English)
Bárbara I. Abadía-Rexach and Carmen Margarita Sánchez De León
Part Two: Artistic Disruptions
6: On Paréntesis
Chayanne Marcano
7: Art Against the Margins: Introducing 20th Century Afro-Puerto Rican Aesthetics
Milagros Denis-Rosario
8: Making Puerto Rico Negrx
Chayanne Marcano, María Elena Ortiz, and Marina Reyes Franco
9: An Artist's Statement
Artist Marcia X
10: Mayra Santos-Febres and Black Girl Futures in Sirena Selena
Wendyliz Martinez
Part Three: Community and Vernacular Practices
11: To Be Free, To Free Each Other
Chayanne Marcano, Paloma Del Mar Hernandez Quiñones, Shaina Simmons, and Yamilin Rivera- Santiago
12: Living Proof: Visualizing Black Puerto Ricans
christopher colón
13: The Mangrove as Life: Why Afro-Puerto Rican Ecosystems Matter
Hilda Lloréns and Carlos G. García-Quijano
14: The Soil Cries Out
Chayanne Marcano and Rose Mary Florián Rodríguez
Part Four: Further Reading
A Select Bibliography of Black Puerto Rican Studies 1970-present
Vanessa K. Valdés and Chayanne Marcano
List of Contributors