{"id":56109,"date":"2018-04-02T02:36:43","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T02:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56109"},"modified":"2018-04-02T02:40:32","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T02:40:32","slug":"searching-for-a-motherland-as-a-black-latina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56109","title":{"rendered":"Searching For A Motherland As A Black Latina"},"content":{"rendered":"

Searching For A Motherland As A Black Latina<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Huffington Post<\/a>
\n2018-03-30<\/p>\n

Maria V. Luna<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Lecturer
\nGoldsmiths University of London<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nAuthor Maria V. Luna<\/a> in the Dominican Republic<\/a> on her way to celebrate carnival<\/a> in 2011.
\nMaria V. Luna <\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

For Black Latinx in the U.S.<\/a>, bicultural, bilingual \u2015 if they are lucky \u2015 and born to immigrant parents, there is no motherland.<\/p>\n

Though 25 percent of U.S. Latinos self-identify as Afro-Latino<\/a>, we are not always made to feel at home in our own country. To be Latinx<\/a> in the U.S.<\/a> is to encounter xenophobic rhetoric from the top of our nation\u2019s political leadership<\/a> down to its base. To be black Latinx is to discover that xenophobia layered with anti-black rhetoric brews even among our own ethnic group.<\/p>\n

Scholars Miriam Jim\u00e9nez Rom\u00e1n<\/a> and the late Juan Flores<\/a> consider W.E.B. Du Bois<\/a> when describing the experience of the Afro-Latino<\/a> in the U.S. as a triple consciousness \u2014 an awareness of being black, Latino and American. It is an elastic awareness, a way of moving in the world that has been woefully underexplored in America and in Spanish-language media and entertainment.<\/p>\n

As an Afro-Latina, I often wondered: Where are my people?<\/em> Where are those who crave mang\u00fa<\/a> for breakfast, a Cuban sandwich<\/a> for lunch and tres leches<\/a> dessert? Where are those who love the \u201cOne Day at a Time<\/a>\u201d reboot with a Latin cast but winced when Lydia, played by Rita Moreno<\/a>, repeats with conviction, \u201cCubans are white!\u201d Didn\u2019t abuela<\/a> dance to Celia Cruz<\/a> every morning as she made breakfast?<\/p>\n

As soon as I could, I journeyed far from New Jersey<\/a> to find my people. I looked for my kindred in the Dominican Republic<\/a>, in Brazil<\/a>, in Spain<\/a> and in the maternal monolith I once imagined Africa<\/a> to be.<\/p>\n

I was looking for that mythical interstitial place where my blackness and Latinidad<\/a> could peacefully coexist. This is what I found…<\/p>\n

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

I was looking for that mythical interstitial place where my blackness and Latinidad could peacefully coexist. This is what I found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,395,83,21,28,14646,8,20],"tags":[3468,10108,9078,28335,28334,9059,28336,10750,892,2425],"class_list":["post-56109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-europe","category-latino","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-dominican-republic","tag-huffington-post","tag-juan-flores","tag-maria-luna","tag-maria-v-luna","tag-miriam-jimenez-roman","tag-morocco","tag-salvador-da-bahia","tag-spain","tag-the-huffington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56109","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=56109"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56112,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56109\/revisions\/56112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}