Dr. Cort's Afro-Latino Culture and History List

Language, and the histories, narratives, and cultures that inform it are not mutually exclusive, so I’m sharing my starter list of “go to” texts and narratives for those interested in delving deeper into Afro-Latino History and Culture:

The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States

Edited by Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, this tome provides insight into aspects of Afro-Latino history and culture such as musical influence, navigation of the Civil Rights Movement and the 1960s and the various trajectories that led many members of the Afro-Latino diaspora to the US.

2. Black Cuban, Black American: A Memoir

In his autobiography, Evelio Grillo documents his life as an Afro-Cuban growing up in the US and navigating spaces such as Ybor City, Washington, DC and Oakland, CA while also combating segregation. His rich work explores the nuances of his identity as a Black, Cuban male in the US. I can’t lie, this book changed my life, and remains one of my favorite books to date. Growing up, I had never read an account of growing up in the US told by an Afro-Cuban and this was my first encounter and it was beautiful!

3. Black Skin, White Masks

I’m including Franz Fanon’s seminal text as a a theoretical framework for understanding black identity, critical race theory from a decentralized context. In this sociological study Fanon breaks down Black identity formation in the face of colonization while examining closely relations between Black men and white women, Black women and white men, and the general effects of socio-cultural circumstance of Blackness.

4. Daughters of the Stone

Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa bears her soul in Daughters of the Stone. A multigenerational story, Daughters of Stone explores the impact of slavery, identity, and collective memory set in the context of mother-daughter bonds across 5 generations.

5. Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Schomburg

Vanessa K. Valdés biography of Arturo Schomburg (think New York City’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture), keys in on the childhood and adolescent influences that served as a foundation for Schomburg’s adult commitment to a life of activism, helping to raise awareness about the contributions of Black Latin Americans and Black Americans to the larger society.

6. Down These Mean Streets

Piri Thomas’ autobiography is a narrative of growth and identity that grabs you and pulls you deep into his adolescence shaped by drugs and violence. It is a narrative that keenly interrogates the complicated anti-blackness sentiments within his Cuban and Puerto Rican family and their later effects on his evolution.

7. Mama’s Girl

Veronica Chambers lifts the veil in her memoir that details her life growing in up as a Panamanian born Afro-Latina, raised in Brooklyn, New York. With a rarely shared Afro-Central American focus, Chambers explores her experiences by centering her reflections on the bonds between mother and daughter.

8. Neither Enemies Nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos

This volume explores “the politics of racialization” in Latin America and the US. It serves as a great introduction to beginning to understand how Blackness operates and is employed in the Latin American context and how this context informs Afro-Latin identity, and the interactions of Black Americans, Latinos and Afro-Latinos in the US.

9. Une Tempete

I’m including Aimé Césaire’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s, The Tempest as Césaire directs his critical gaze to the specific case of the Black colonial subject via a transcription of the play. In his rewrite Césaire specifically associates the character of Ariel with the mulatto and Caliban to the field slave. His text is a very vocal denunciation of colonialism as well as a critique of the effects of colonialism on the Black colonial subject.

This is just a springboard and not an exhaustive list, so please share texts that you love in the comments below!