Description
An exploration of how Afro-Mexicans affirmed their culture, subjectivities and colonial condition through festive culture and performance.
About the Author
Miguel A. Valerio is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on the African Diaspora in the literatures and cultures of the Iberian world. This is his first book.
Reviews
'Insightful and provocative, Sovereign Joy amplifies the sonorous and accentuates the performative so that sound and play consume every page as they surely did Black and Colonial life. Valerio's nuanced reading engages but also disrupts the analytically staid field of Afro-Mexican Studies with its focus on structure, institutional expressions, and ideology. Truly rewarding.' Herman Bennett, author of African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic
'Sovereign Joy ushers in a vibrant era of scholarship on Afro-Mexican communal organizations. Emphasizing participant subjectivities, Valerio's elegant prose guides readers through these royally inflected spectacles. Readers will breathe in the sights, smells, and sounds of these joyful Baroque events.' Nicole von Germeten, author of The Enlightened Patrolman: Early Law Enforcement in Mexico City
'Sovereign Joy demonstrates the ways Afro-Mexicans plotted within colonial structures to form and perform their festive culture as a powerful act of collective agency and defiance.' Mariselle Melendez, author of Deviant and Useful Citizens: The Cultural Production of the Female Body in Eighteenth-Century Peru
'Valerio's Sovereign Joy is an extraordinary book-meticulously researched, brilliantly argued, and beautifully illustrated. The histories of Afro-Mexican presence and of the festivities that sustained Black joy and survival have too long been obscured. Valerio's timely intervention changes that. Essential reading for Black and performance studies.' Diana Taylor, author of !Presente! The Politics of Presence
'A phenomenal book of scholarly detective work that painstakingly reconstructs Afro-Mexican cultural practices and legacies that have been long-lost, misinterpreted, and obscured over time. Sovereign Joy is a rich testament to how expanding our interpretive toolset can lead us to recover the very sounds, emotions, feel, and texture of colonial life that have long been considered ephemeral and fleeting. An absolutely amazing work.' Ben Vinson III, author of Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico
Book Information
ISBN 9781316514382
Author Miguel A. Valerio
Format Hardback
Page Count 282
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 530g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 156mm * 20mm