Mixed Race Studies

Manuel Zapata Olivella and the “Darkening” of Latin American Literature

University of Missouri Press
2005
168 pages
6 x 9
index, bibliography
ISBN 978-0-8262-1578-9

Antonio D. Tillis, Associate Professor of African and African American Studies
Dartmouth University

Manuel Zapata Olivella and the “Darkening” of Latin American Literature is an examination of the fictional work of one of Latin America’s most prolific, yet overlooked, writers. Born in Colombia to parents of mixed ancestry, Zapata Olivella [English translation by Google here] uses his novels to explore the plight of the downtrodden in his nation and by extension the experience of blacks in other parts of the Americas. Author Antonio D. Tillis offers a critical examination of Zapata Olivella’s major works of fiction from the 1940s to the present, including Tierra mojada (1947); Pasión vagabunda (1949); He visto la noche (1953); La Calle 10 (1960); En Chimá nace un santo (1963); Las claves mágicas de América (1989); and Hemingway, el cazador de la muerte (1993).

Tillis focuses on the development of the “black aesthetic” in Zapata Olivella’s stories, in which the circumstances of the people of African heritage are centered in the narrative discourse. Tillis also traces Zapata Olivella’s novelistic effort to incorporate the Africa-descended subject into the literature of Latin America. A critical look at the placement of Afro–Latin American protagonists reveals the sociopolitical and historical challenges of citizenship and community. In addition, this study explores tenets of postcolonial and postmodern thought such as place, displacement, marginalization, historiographic metafiction, and chronological disjuncture in relation to Zapata Olivella’s fiction. Tillis concludes that the novelistic trajectory of this Afro-Colombian writer is one that brings into literary history an often overlooked subject: the disenfranchised citizen of African ancestry.

 By expanding and updating the current scholarship on Zapata Olivella, Tillis leads us to new contexts for and interpretations of this author’s work. This analysis will be welcomed by readers who are just beginning to discover the writings of Zapata Olivella, and its new approach to those writings will be appreciated by scholars who are already familiar with his works.

Damn Near White: An African American Family’s Rise from Slavery to Bittersweet Success

University of Missouri Press
October 2010
192 pages
15 illustrations, bibliography index
ISBN-10: 0826218997
ISBN-13: 978-0826218995

Carolyn Marie Wilkins, Professor
Berklee College of Music, Boston, Massachusetts

Carolyn Wilkins grew up defending her racial identity. Because of her light complexion and wavy hair, she spent years struggling to convince others that she was black. Her family’s prominence set Carolyn’s experiences even further apart from those of the average African American. Her father and uncle were well-known lawyers who had graduated from Harvard Law School. Another uncle had been a child prodigy and protégé of Albert Einstein. And her grandfather [J. Ernest Wilkins] had been America’s first black assistant secretary of labor.

Carolyn’s parents insisted she follow the color-conscious rituals of Chicago’s elite black bourgeoisie—experiences Carolyn recalls as some of the most miserable of her entire life. Only in the company of her mischievous Aunt Marjory, a woman who refused to let the conventions of “proper” black society limit her, does Carolyn feel a true connection to her family’s African American heritage.

When Aunt Marjory passes away, Carolyn inherits ten bulging scrapbooks filled with family history and memories. What she finds in these photo albums inspires her to discover the truth about her ancestors—a quest that will eventually involve years of research, thousands of miles of travel, and much soul-searching.

Carolyn learns that her great-grandfather John Bird Wilkins was born into slavery and went on to become a teacher, inventor, newspaperman, renegade Baptist minister, and a bigamist who abandoned five children. And when she discovers that her grandfather J. Ernest Wilkins may have been forced to resign from his labor department post by members of the Eisenhower administration, Carolyn must confront the bittersweet fruits of her family’s generations-long quest for status and approval.

Damn Near White is an insider’s portrait of an unusual American family. Readers will be drawn into Carolyn’s journey as she struggles to redefine herself in light of the long-buried secrets she uncovers. Tackling issues of class, color, and caste, Wilkins reflects on the changes of African American life in U.S. history through her dedicated search to discover her family’s powerful story.

Dangerous crossroads: Mestizaje in the U.S. Latino/a imaginary

Rice University
December 2007
197 pages
Publication ID: 3309864

John L. Escobedo, Assistant Professor of English
University of Colorado, Boulder

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

My dissertation interrogates mestizaje and nationalism to rethink academic tendencies that construct resistant methodologies and singular national representations of hybrid theories and racial identities. To ground this argument, chapters one and two analyze how nationalism compromises current theoretical and feminist uses of mestizaje. The introductory chapter traces the influence of Latin American cultural theorists such as José Vasconcelos (1925) and Fernando Ortiz (1940) on contemporary U.S. Latino/a cultural critics. I argue that by selectively borrowing theoretical elements from Ortiz and Vasconcelos, U.S. Latino/a scholars unintentionally consolidate divergent Latino/a histories as well as ignore issues of nation building, class differences, and racial tensions to promote a unitary discourse of subversive mestizaje. Likewise, my analysis of Jovita González’s novel Caballero (1930) reveals how González’s feminist tactics counteract Mexico’s patriarchal oppression of women by going against traditional feminist themes esteemed in Chicano/a Studies. For González, nationalist tropes of indigenous curanderismo (spirituality) and magical realism insufficiently respond to the needs of oppressed Mexican American women.

The final two chapters evaluate the ramifications of constructing unitary racial identities of whiteness and blackness. My final investigation uncovers the existence of ethnicities within North American racial categorizations of whiteness and blackness that provide new insights to mestizaje’s disruption of ordered classifications of race in the United States. Chapter three argues that the southeastern European immigrant experience of racial inclusion and exclusion from Anglo Saxon whiteness allowed María Amparo Ruiz de Burton to play off of new conceptions of whiteness in an evolving imaginary of white U.S. mestizaje to write her novels The Squatter and the Don (1885) and Who Would Have Thought It? (1872). Chapter four examines the rise of the New Negro Movement during the Harlem Renaissance as a cultural event that required the erasure of individuals in the black community who did not mirror the collective identity of African Americans. This chapter specifically studies Puerto Rican archivist Arthur A. Schomburg as a figure who broadened the conception of the New Negro to recognize the intellectual participation and contribution of Afro Caribbeans to the Harlem Renaissance.

Read the entire dissertation here.