The Afro-Latino Memoir - by Trent Masiki (Paperback)

About the Book

"Despite their literary and cultural significance, Afro-Latino memoirs have been marginalized in both Latino and African American studies. Trent Masiki remedies this problem by bringing critical attention to the understudied African American influences in Afro-Latino memoirs published after the advent of the Black Arts movement. Masiki shows how Afro-Latino memoir writers often turn to the African American experience as a model for articulating their Afro-Latinidad. African American literary production, expressive culture, political ideology, and religiosity shaped Afro-Latino subjectivity more profoundly than typically imagined between the post-war and post-soul eras"--

Book Synopsis

Despite their literary and cultural significance, Afro-Latino memoirs have been marginalized in both Latino and African American studies. Trent Masiki remedies this problem by bringing critical attention to the understudied African American influences in Afro-Latino memoirs published after the advent of the Black Arts movement. Masiki argues that these memoirs expand on the meaning of racial identity for both Latinos and African Americans. Using interpretive strategies and historical methods from literary and cultural studies, Masiki shows how Afro-Latino memoir writers often turn to the African American experience as a model for articulating their Afro-Latinidad. African American literary production, expressive culture, political ideology, and religiosity shaped Afro-Latino subjectivity more profoundly than typically imagined between the post-war and post-soul eras. Masiki recovers this neglected history by exploring how and why Black nationalism shaped Afro-Latinidad in the United States.

This book opens the border between the canons of Latino and African American literature, encouraging greater intercultural solidarities between Latinos and African Americans in the era of Black Lives Matter.

Review Quotes

"A sincere invitation to look more closely at the memoiristic genre and Afro-Latino authors to interrogate what Afro-Latinidad as a concept and a lived experience can bring to our ideas of what Latino-ness and Blackness mean in a so-called post-racial or post-civil rights United States. Those interested in considering how the memoir and literature can be richly explored and those looking for new ways to think about the history and trajectory of African American/Afro-Latino relations will gain much from reading The Afro-Latino Memoir."--Journal of African American History