Geographies of Relation offers a new lens for examining diaspora and borderlands texts and performances that considers the inseparability of race, ethnicity, and gender in imagining and enacting social change. Theresa Delgadillo crosses interdisciplinary and canonical borders to investigate the interrelationships of African-descended Latinx and mestizx peoples through an analysis of Latin American, Latinx, and African American literature, film, and performance.

Not only does Delgadillo offer a rare extended analysis of Black Latinidades in Chicanx literature and theory, but she also considers over a century's worth of literary, cinematic, and performative texts to support her argument about the significance of these cultural sites and overlaps. Chapters illuminate the significance of Tona La Negra in the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, reconsider feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldua's work in revising exclusionary Latin American ideologies of mestizaje, delve into the racial and gender frameworks Sandra Cisneros attempts to rewrite, unpack encounters between African Americans and Black Puerto Ricans in texts by James Baldwin and Marta Moreno Vega, explore the African diaspora in colonial and contemporary Peru through Daniel Alarcon's literature and the documentary Soy Andina, and revisit the centrality of Black power in ending colonialism in Cuban narratives. Geographies of Relation demonstrates the long histories of networks and exchanges across the Americas as well as the interrelationships among Indigenous, Black, African American, mestizx, Chicanx, and Latinx peoples. It offers a compelling argument that geographies of relation are as significant as national frameworks in structuring cultural formation and change in this hemisphere.

About the Author

Theresa Delgadillo is a Vilas Distinguished Professor of English and Chican@ and Latin@ Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is also Director of the Chican@ and Latin@ Studies Program. She is a founder and editor for the online publication Latinx Talk.

Reviews

"A seminal and ground-breaking work of authentic and original scholarship..."

-- Midwest Book Review



Book Information
ISBN 9780472076932
Author Theresa Delgadillo
Format Hardback
Page Count 330
Imprint The University of Michigan Press
Publisher The University of Michigan Press