This essay analyzes representations and imaginaries of blackness in contemporary Puerto Rico, by focusing on the debates raised by 'Raices'/(Roots) (2001), the Banco Popular video special about traditional Afro-Puerto Rican rhythms of bomba and plena. These debates divided public opinion in Puerto Rico and included members of academia, musicologists, bomba and plena groups, and the San Anton (Ponce) community residents. They refer to the ways Puerto Ricans 'speak the unspoken,' that is, the ways Puerto Ricans talk about race and its intersectionalities on the island and in the diaspora.
Journal Article, Examines the experiences of Afro-Cuban immigrants in non-traditional settlement sites in the Southwest. Drawing on 45 interviews with Afro-Cubans in Austin, Texas and Albuquerque, New Mexico, the authors explore how respondents position themselves relative to the local Mexican-origin population. Specifically focuses on the implications of 'Hispanic' identity in these cities as a category that is heavily tied to Mexican origin, 'brownness,' and the suspicion of illegality. As Afro-Cubans, respondents face a different racialization process than many non-black Latino immigrants, in that their blackness marks them as outside the bounds of regional constructions of Hispanic identity.
Discusses representations of the 'Afro-Cuban-occupied house' in Cuban-American autobiographical narratives of a 1990s return to Cuba. A trope in which island Afro-Cubans inhabit houses once owned or lived in by white Cuban-Americans, the Afro-Cuban-occupied house appears repeatedly in Cuban-American literary and film texts during the period. The article argues that the trope, more than another example of 'literary Afro-Cubanness,' discloses Cuban-American whiteness and its constitutive element, privilege, thus inviting Cuban-American literary and cultural studies to engage in conversations along the lines of a critical Latino whiteness studies.
