The Afro-Latin@ Reader

The Afro-Latin@ Readerfocuses attention on a large, vibrant, yet oddly invisible community in the United States: people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean. The presence of Afro-Latin@s in the United States (and throughout the Americas) belies the notion that Blacks and Latin@s are two distinct categories or cultures. Afro-Latin@s are uniquely situated to bridge the widening social divide between Latin@s and African Americans. At the same time, their experiences reveal pervasive racism among Latin@s and ethnocentrism among African Americans. Offering insight into Afro-Latin@ life and new ways to understand culture, ethnicity, nation, identity, and antiracist politics,The Afro-Latin@ Readerpresents a kaleidoscopic view of Black Latin@s in the United States. It addresses history, music, gender, class, and media representations in more than sixty selections, including scholarly essays, memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles, poetry, short stories, and interviews. While the selections cover centuries of Afro-Latin@ history, from the mid-sixteenth-century arrival of Spanish-speaking Africans to the present, the majority focus on the past fifty years. The central question of how Afro-Latin@s relate to and experience U.S. racial ideologies is engaged throughout, in first-person accounts of growing up Afro-Latin@, a classic essay by a leader of the Young Lords, and a sociological analysis of answers to U.S. Census questions about race, as well as in pieces on hair-straightening, major-league baseball, and the Yoruba tradition. The contributions that Afro-Latin@s have made to U.S. culture are highlighted in essays on the illustrious Afro-Puerto Rican educator Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and music and dance genres from salsa to mambo, and boogaloo to hip-hop. Taken together, these and many more selections help to bring Afro-Latin@s in the United States into critical view.

Miriam Jimnez Romn is the Executive Director of afrolatin@ forum, a research and resource center focusing on Black Latin@s in the United States, and a Visiting Scholar in the Africana Studies Program at New York University. Juan Flores is Professor in the Department of social and Cultural Analysis at New York University.