Geographies of Relation

Geographies of Relation demonstrates how examining texts created throughout the Americas about diaspora and borderlands offers a lens to think about representations of race, ethnicity, and gender. Theresa Delgadillo crosses interdisciplinary and canonical borders to investigate the interrelationships of African-descended, Latinx and mestizx peoples through an analysis of Latin American, Latinx, and African American literature, film, and performance. Not only does Delgadillo offer a rare extended analysis of Black Latinidades in Chicanx literature and theory, but she also considers over a century's worth of literary, cinematic, and performative texts to support her argument about the significance of these cultural sites and overlaps. Chapters illuminate the significance of Toña La Negra in the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, reconsider feminist theorist's Gloria Anzaldúa offerings to revise exclusionary Latin American ideologies of mestizaje, unpack encounters between African Americans and Black Puerto Ricans in texts about twentieth-century New York, explore the expression of the African diaspora in colonial and contemporary Peru through literature and performance, and revisit the centrality of Black power in ending colonialism in various narratives. Thus, Geographies of Relation demonstrates the long histories of diaspora networks and exchanges across the Americas as well as the interrelationships among Indigenous, mestizx, Chicanx, and Latinx peoples. It offers a compelling argument that geographies of relation are as significant as national frameworks at structuring cultural formation and change in this hemisphere.