Description
Daughters of the Diaspora features the creative writing of 20 Hispanophone women of African descent, as well as the interpretive essays of 15 literary critics. The collection is unique in its combination of genres, including poetry, short stories, essays, excerpts from novels and personal narratives, many of which are being translated into English for the first time. They address issues of ethnicity, sexuality, social class and self-representation and in so doing shape a revolutionary discourse that questions and subverts historical assumptions and literary conventions.
Miriam DeCosta-Willis’s comprehensive Introduction, biographical sketches of the authors and their chronological arrangement within the text, provide an accessible history of the evolution of an Afra-Hispanic literary tradition in the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America.
The book will be useful as textbook in courses in Africana Studies, Women’s Studies, Caribbean, Latina and Latin American Studies as well as courses in literature and the humanities.
Contents
Virginia Brindis De Salas (1908–1958)
Hallelujah!
Pregón Number One
The Conga
The Unmasking of Virginia Brindis de Salas: Minority
Discourse of Afro-Uruguay
Caroll Mills Young
Carmen Colón Pellot (b.1911)
Oh Lord, I Want to be White!
Roots of Mulata Envy
The Land is a Mulatto Woman
‘Oh Lord, I Want to be White’: The Ambivalence of Mulatez in Carmen Colón Pellot’s Ambar mulatto
Claudette Williams
Julia De Burgos (1914–1953)
Cry of the Kinky Haired Girl
Rio Grande de Loíza
To Julia de Burgos
Pentachrome
Letters to Her Sister Consuelo
‘ I am the Life, the Strength, the Woman’: Feminism in Julia de Burgos’ Autobiographical Poetry
Consuelo López Springfield
Aida Cartagena Portalatín (1918–1994)
Black Autumn
A Woman is Alone
Wasted Effort
Aida Cartagena Portalatín: A Literary Life. Moca, Dominican Republic, 1918–94
Daisy Cocco de Filippis
Marta Rojas (b.1931)
The Sweet Enigma of a Writer’s Life: A Personal
Narrative
From Holy Lust or White Papers
Marta Rojas’s Santa lujuria and the Transformation of Cuban History in Mythic Fiction
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Eulalia Bernard (b.1935)
Now That I am Yours Limón
We
What Fi Do?
‘Our Weapon is Strong Language’: A Conversation with Eulalia Bernard
Shirley Jackson
Eulalia Bernard: A Caribbean Woman Writer and the Dynamics of Liberation
Ian I. Smart
Georgina Herrera (b. 1936)
Street of the Women of the World
First Time in Front of a Mirror
Ibu Sedi
‘The Lion’s Version of the Jungle’: A Conversation with Georgina Herrera
Linda S. Howe
Toward a Definition of the Self in the Poetry of Georgina Herrera
Gabriel A. Abudu
Lourdes Casal (1938–1981)
For Ana Veldford
Profile of My City
Identity and the Politics of (Dis)Location in Lourdes Casal’s
I Live in Cuba
The Founders: Alfonso
Narratives of Place
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Argentina Chiriboga (b. 1940)
from The Backcover of Desire:
…Untitled: ‘Changó and Yemayá go by’
…Untitled: ‘Let my braid loose’
…Untitled: ‘On these avenues’
from Drums Under My Skin
The Poetics and Politics of Desire: Eroticism in Luz
Argentina Chiriboga’s Bajo la piel de los tambores
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Nancy Morejón (b. 1944)
Ana Mendieta
Lady of the Unicorn
Persona
from Myth and Reality in Cecilia Valdés
An Aesthetic of Women’s Art in Nancy Morejón’s ‘Ana Mendieta’
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Excilia Saldaña (1946–1999)
Autobiography
from My Name (A Family Anti-Elegy)
The Zeal for Self-Denomination in the Poetic Works of Excilia Saldaña
Flora M. González
Beatriz Santos (b. 1947)
Black Griot
Fire
Chulin’s Fantasy
Tia Coca
María Nsué Angüe (b. 1948)
from Ekomo
Writing from the Soul: A Conversation with María Nsué Angüe
M’baré N’Gom
Narrative of a Woman’s Life and Writing: María Nsué Angüe’s Ekomo
M’Baré N’Gom
Sherezada (Chiqui) Vicioso (b. 1948)
An Oral History (Testimonio)
Julia de Burgos: Our Julia
from Algo que decir (Something to Say)
A Strange Wailing of the Wind
The Journey Inward: Sherezada Vicioso’s ‘Un extraño ulular de voces traía el veinto’
Aida Heredia
Soleida Ríos (b. 1950)
I Also Sing of Myself
Autumn Rains
Untitled
The Horn Calls Out to Us Loudly
Final Rites
Life
Soleida’s Reappearance
Antón Arrufat
Edelma Zapata Pérez (b. 1954)
Death
The Final Drop
Ancestral Fears
The Consciousness-Raising of an Afro-Indo-Mulatto
Woman Writer in Colombia’s Multiethnic Society
Yvonne-América Truque (1955–2001)
Warrior Woman
Being a Woman and Writing
On that Underbrush that has Entrapped Us
Someone is Sleeping
from ‘Retratos de Sombras’ (Portraits of Shadows)
Untitled: ‘There is no promised land, nor paradise’
From ‘Perfiles inconclusos’ (Unfinished Profiles): VI
VII
Yvonne-América Truque: A New Female Voice from Colombia
Marvin A. Lewis
Cristina Cabral (b. 1959)
25 August 1988
From My Trench
Five Hundred Years After
Memory and Resistance
Crossing Borders/Crossing Boundaries: Cristina Cabral’s Memoria y resistencia
Caroll Mills Young
Shirley Campbell (b. 1965)
Closing the Circle That Began in Africa
Abuelo/Grandpa
VII
XII
‘Patches of Dreams’: The Birth of Shirley Campbell’s Oeuvre
Dellita Martin-Ogunsola
Shirley Campbell’s Rotundamente negra: Content and Technique
Mayra Santos-Febres (b. 1966)
The Institute of Culture Says
Marina’s Fragrance
‘The Page on Which Life Writes Itself’: A Conversation with Mayra Santos-Febres
Elba D. Birmingham-Pokomy
Reclaiming the Female Body, Culture, and Identity in Mayra Santos-Febres’ ‘Broken Strand’
Elba D. Birmingham-Pokomy
