Unbecoming Blackness The Diaspora Cultures Of Afro-cuban America

2014 Runner-up, mla prize in united states latina and latino and chicana and chicano literary and cultural studies in unbecoming blackness, antonio lópez uncovers an important, otherwise unrecognized century-long archive of literature and performance that reveals cuban america as a space of overlapping cuban and african diasporic experiences. López shows how afro-cuban writers and performers in the u.S. Align cuban black and mulatto identities, often subsumed in the mixed-race and postracial cuban national imaginaries, with the material and symbolic blackness of african americans and other afro-latinas os.In the works of alberto o'farrill, eusebia cosme, rómulo lachatañeré, and others, afro-cubanness articulates the african diasporic experience in ways that deprive negro and mulato configurations of an exclusive link with cuban nationalism.Instead, what is invoked is an unbecoming relationship between afro-cubans in the u.S and their domestic black counterparts.The transformations in cuban racial identity across the hemisphere, represented powerfully in the literary and performance cultures of afro-cubans in the u.S., Provide the fullest account of a transnational cuba, one in which the cuban american emerges as afro-cuban-american, and the latino as afro-latino.

2014 Runner-up, mla prize in united states latina and latino and chicana and chicano literary and cultural studies in unbecoming blackness, antonio lópez uncovers an