429 p., Founded in 1969 in Lima, Perú Negro is now the most widely recognized Afro-Peruvian dance and music company. In order to emphasize the black presence in a nation that has dominantly narrated itself as mestizo, Perú Negro has produced representations of blackness that are grounded both on the history of slavery and on Diasporic idealizations of Africanness. While meant to value blackness through its music and dance performance, Perú Negro’s representations have contributed to romanticize the slave past and essentialize the African roots. This is made clear in the group’s concept of “family” upon which Perú Negro has relied to define who can and cannot belong to the group as well as who is capable of performing blackness.
233 p., Analyzes three contemporary novels by Black women authors to argue that their daughter-protagonists gain a sense of their own subjectivities as women of African descent through their imaginative and creative responses to their respective muted paternal histories and legacies. These responses motivate the creation of ritualistic art forms rooted in communal practices such as storytelling, sculpting, music, dance-drama, folk medicine, and traditional cuisine. Maps the centrality of family, community, rituals, and art to the development of female subjectivity as represented in Marilene Felinto's As mulheres de Tijucopapo / The Women of Tijucopapo , Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker , and Gayl Jones's Corregidora.
