{"id":34508,"date":"2013-10-29T01:27:18","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T01:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=34508"},"modified":"2014-03-25T17:56:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-25T17:56:16","slug":"unbecoming-blackness-the-diaspora-cultures-of-afro-cuban-america-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=34508","title":{"rendered":"Unbecoming blackness: the diaspora cultures of Afro-Cuban America [Review]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unbecoming blackness: the diaspora cultures of Afro-Cuban America [Review]<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ethnic and Racial Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 37, Issue 5<\/a>, 2014
\npages 889-890
\nDOI: 10.1080\/01419870.2013.847200<\/a><\/p>\n

Nora G\u00e1mez Torres<\/strong>, Visiting scholar
\nCuban Research Institute
\nFlorida International University, Miami<\/em><\/p>\n

Unbecoming Blackness: The Diaspora cultures of Afro-Cuban America<\/a><\/em>, by Antonio L\u00f3pez<\/a>, New York, New York University Press, 2012, xi + 272 pp., (paperback), ISBN 978-0-8147-6547-0.<\/p>\n

Unbecoming Blackness<\/em> poses directly the question of an underdiscussed afrolatinidad<\/em> in Cuban American Studies. The book opens up by analysing the lives and performances of key figures in the Afro-Cuban diaspora in the USA during the first half of the twentieth century: Alberto O\u2019Farrill, a writer and blackface actor in the teatro bufo<\/em> a theatrical Cuban genre he helped to export to New York: and Eusebia Cosme, a renowned performer of poes\u00eda negra<\/em> (black poetry) and actress. This is the first significant accomplishment of the book, since these histories had to be carefully recovered and reconstructed by collecting disperse information, the ‘fragments attaches’ (14) common to black diasporas in the Americas.<\/p>\n

The third chapter, examining the afrolatinidad<\/em> and specific Puerto Rican identifications in the work of Cuban-born anthropologist R\u00f3mulo Lachata\u00f1er\u00e9 and Cuban-descendent writer Piri Thomas<\/a>, continues building the main theme of the book: how Afro-Cubans actively negotiate their racialization in the USA, by cither asserting or concealing their ‘Hispanic’ heritage through linguistic choices, or by forging alliances with black Americans and other Latin\/o groups. In so doing, they enact an afrolatinidad<\/em> that is malleable and transnational, and thus, unsettling for hegemonic Cuban and Cuban American identities, rooted in nationalism and whiteness. That performers such as Cosme and O’Farrill and scholars such as Lachata\u00f1er\u00e9 travelled to the USA looking for better professional opportunities and decided to associate to ‘subaltern’ subjects such as black Americans and other Latino groups, generated an anxiety among Cuban writers and intellectuals of the time who defended the idea of mestizaje<\/a><\/em>, as L\u00f3pez shows in these chapters. The point of conflict is brilliantly captured in the following passage by Lopez: (the implication) ‘that Afro-Cubans are somehow ‘better off’ being in and belonging to an explicitly racist US nation rather than, it turns out, Cuba. This being and belonging is asserted against ‘the best interests’ of a postracial, mestizo<\/em>, even negro<\/em> island-Cuban nation\u2014indeed, against the ‘best interests’ of Afro-Cubans themselves’ (9). To speak of an afrolatinidad<\/em> in this context disrupts both Cuban American and Cuban fictions of national identity. Precisely due to the implications of the book for a critical debate on Cuban racial identities on and off the island, it would have been very useful for the leader to have a contextual analysis of what was happening in Cuba in different moments and in the different fields the author explores.<\/p>\n

Less accomplished is the following chapter, in which L\u00f3pez lacks the clarity to successfully connect ‘texts around 1979 in Miami and the overlapping histories of the illicit drug trade. African American uprising, Mariel migration<\/a>‘ (16), to Cuban American reactions to the ‘blackening’ of their community after Mariel and the African Americans…<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unbecoming blackness: the diaspora cultures of Afro-Cuban America [Review] Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 37, Issue 5, 2014 pages 889-890 DOI: 10.1080\/01419870.2013.847200 Nora G\u00e1mez Torres, Visiting scholar Cuban Research Institute Florida International University, Miami Unbecoming Blackness: The Diaspora cultures of Afro-Cuban America, by Antonio L\u00f3pez, New York, New York University Press, 2012, xi + 272 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,5,21,8],"tags":[9099,673,461,16261,16260,16262],"class_list":["post-34508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-latincarib","category-media-archive","tag-antonio-lopez","tag-cuba","tag-ethnic-and-racial-studies","tag-nora-g-torres","tag-nora-gamez-torres","tag-nora-torres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}