Black Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

Critical Research and Perspectives

Edited by Melanie A. Medeiros and Keisha-Khan Y. Perry; Foreword by Christen A. Smith

Rutgers University Press

Black Women in Latin America and the Caribbean: Critical Research and Perspectives employs an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach to examine Black cisgender women’s social, cultural, economic, and political experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean. It presents critical empirical research emphasizing Black women’s innovative, theoretical, and methodological approaches to activism and class-based gendered racism and Black politics. While there are a few single-authored books focused on Black women in Latin American and Caribbean, the vast majority of the scholarship on Black women in Latin America and the Caribbean has been published as theses, dissertations, articles, and book chapters. This volume situates these social and political analyses as interrelated and dialogic and contributes a transnational perspective to contemporary conversations surrounding the continued relevance of Black women as a category of social science inquiry. Many of the contributing authors are from Latin American and Caribbean countries, reflecting a commitment to representing the valuable observations and lived experiences of scholars from this region. When read together, the chapters offer a hemispheric framework for understanding the lasting legacies of colonialism, transatlantic slavery, plantation life, and persistent socio-economic and cultural violence.

This exciting new volume foregrounds Latin American and Caribbean women’s core contributions to a hemispheric Black radical tradition. The collection lovingly captures the brilliance and power of women’s African diasporic politics and thought in the face of unrelenting violence against them. Essential reading for all people who care about liberation.' Jennifer Goett, author of Black Autonomy: Race, Gender, and Afro-Nicaraguan Activism

Black Women in Latin America and the Caribbean is a key intervention against the citational erasure of Afro-Latin American women intellectuals that simultaneously highlights their intellectual contributions and political activism. At a historical moment when Black women are taking on prominent roles as elected national leaders in countries such as Costa Rica and Colombia, this edited volume brings together excellent, rigorously researched essays on the transnational feminist activism of black women in multiple Latin American countries, including Brazil, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Cuba, Colombia, and Peru. In so doing it broadens the geographic and conceptual boundaries of Black Studies, Latin American Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies.'
Juliet Hooker, author of Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos

Melanie A. Medeiros is an associate professor of anthropology at SUNY Geneseo. She is the author of Marriage, Divorce and Distress in Northeast Brazil: Black Women’s Perspectives on Love, Respect and Kinship (Rutgers University Press). She is also the co-editor of Ethnographic Insights on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Keisha-Khan Y. Perry is an associate professor of Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil, winner of the 2014 Gloria Anzaldua Book Prize from the National Women's Studies Association and a Choice Review Outstanding Title for 2014.

Foreword
Reconfiguring the Politics of Knowledge: Writing
Transnational Black Feminism from the South
CHRISTEN A. SMITH

Introduction 1
KEISHA-KHAN Y. PERRY AND MELANIE A. MEDEIROS

1 Reclaiming a Legacy: Black Women’s Presence and
Perspectives in the Brazilian Social Sciences
EDILZA CORREIA SOTERO

2 Beyond Intercultural Mestizaje: Toward Black Women’s
Studies on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua
MELANIE WHITE

3 The Significance of “Communists Wearing Panties”
in the Jamaican Left Movement (1974–1980)
MAZIKI THAME

4 Exercising Diversity: From Identity to Alliances
in Brazil’s Contemporary Black Feminism
JULIA S. ABDALL A

5 “This Isn’t to Get Rich”: Double Morality and
Black Women Private Tutors in Cuba
ANGELA CRUMDY

6 A “Bundle of Silences”: Untold Stories of Black Women
Survivors of the War in Colombia
CASTRIELA E. HERNÁNDEZ-REYES

7 The Burden of Las Bravas: Race and Violence
against Afro-Peruvian Women
ESHE L. LEWIS

8 A Creole Christmas: Sexual Panic and Reproductive
Justice in Bluefields, Nicaragua
ISHAN GORDON-UGARTE

9 Digital Black Feminist Activism in Brazil: Toward a
Repoliticization of Aesthetics and Romantic Relationships
BRUNA CRISTINA JAQUETTO PEREIRA AND CRISTIANO RODRIGUES

Notes on Contributors
Index

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