Racial Migrations - by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The gripping history of Afro-Latino migrants who conspired to overthrow a colonial monarchy, end slavery, and secure full citizenship in their homelands

In the late nineteenth century, a small group of Cubans and Puerto Ricans of African descent settled in the segregated tenements of New York City. At an immigrant educational society in Greenwich Village, these early Afro-Latino New Yorkers taught themselves to be poets, journalists, and revolutionaries. At the same time, these individuals--including Rafael Serra, a cigar maker, writer, and politician; Sotero Figueroa, a typesetter, editor, and publisher; and Gertrudis Heredia, one of the first women of African descent to study midwifery at the University of Havana--built a political network and articulated an ideal of revolutionary nationalism centered on the projects of racial and social justice. These efforts were critical to the poet and diplomat José Martí's writings about race and his bid for leadership among Cuban exiles, and to the later struggle to create space for black political participation in the Cuban Republic.

In Racial Migrations, Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof presents a vivid portrait of these largely forgotten migrant revolutionaries, weaving together their experiences of migrating while black, their relationships with African American civil rights leaders, and their evolving participation in nationalist political movements. By placing Afro-Latino New Yorkers at the center of the story, Hoffnung-Garskof offers a new interpretation of the revolutionary politics of the Spanish Caribbean, including the idea that Cuba could become a nation without racial divisions.

A model of transnational and comparative research, Racial Migrations reveals the complexities of race-making within migrant communities and the power of small groups of immigrants to transform their home societies.

Review Quotes

"Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof's Racial Migrations employs a microhistorical approach to depict how Cubans and Puerto Ricans of African descent negotiated with non-Black revolutionaries to secure their full rights as citizens. . . . Racial Migrations eloquently explores how people of African descent from different walks of life and nationalities united under cross-social and multiracial social clubs."---Andrea Carolina Morales Loucil, World History Connected

"Racial Migrations is a timely exploration of the political subjectivities and organizing practices of Black and racially-mixed Cuban intellectuals, activists, and workers in their nineteenth-century struggles for freedom, democratic participation, and racial equality. . . . [An] enticing reading."---Ileana María Rodríguez-Silva, CENTRO Journal

"A fantastic and important work."---Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe

"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year"

"Based on extensive and imaginative research, and written with a wonderful touch, the book offers, as one of its back-cover tributes puts it, a model for how to produce a transnational history of migration and race. . . . Hoffnung-Garskof offers a deep immersion in the world-view of these migrants."---Peter Hulme, New West Indian Guide

"Co-Winner of the Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book (North American), Urban History Association"

"It is impossible to do justice to such well-researched, skilfully crafted, beautifully written, and thought-provoking book as Hoffnung-Garskof's in a short review. . . . Racial Migrations [is] a model of research and writing, and a source for future research."---Antonio Hernández Matos, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

"Winner of the Theodore Saloutos Book Award, Immigration and Ethnic History Society"

About the Author

Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof is professor of history, American culture, and Latina/o studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York after 1950 (Princeton).