Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar 
Améfrica in Letters 
Literary Interventions from Mexico to the Southern Cone

Traditional histories of Black letters in Latin America have delimited their geographic scope to the Caribbean while also omitting intertwined Afro-Indigenous discourses. Inspired by the legacy of Amefrican thinker Lélia Gonzalez,
Améfrica in Letters highlights the Black poets, songwriters, novelists, essayists, and bloggers who have created a counter-multiculturalist literary history on the Latin American mainland. To capture a sense of the variety of their contributions, this book spans Mexico, Central America, the Andes, and the Southern Cone—highlighting the transcontinental nature of the legacy of Black writing and its impact beyond national boundaries. The writers examined in the volume engage with regional intellectual frameworks while putting into circulation a demand for a recalibration of the Hispanophone and Lusophone contexts in which they and other Afrodescendants reside.

Table of Content

Introduction: Black Writing on the Latin American Mainland: Disruptions to the Prose of Multiculturalism


Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar



Part I: Afro Poetics

1. Language and the Construction of Gendered Identities in Afro-Mexican
Corridos or Ballads


Paulette A. Ramsay


2. A Post-Ethnic/Racial Futurescape in Wingston González’s
cafeína MC


Juan Guillermo Sánchez Martínez

3. Antonio Preciado: Ecuador’s Afrocentric Poet


Michael Handelsman




Part II: Lettered Outliers

4. Transatlantic Routing and Rooting in Quince Duncan’s
Kimbo


Gloria Elizabeth Chacón

5. The Palimpsestic Afro-Panamanian Woman in Melanie Taylor Herrera’s
Camino a Mariato


Ángela Castro

6. Black Lives Matter in Brazil: Cidinha da Silva’s
#Parem de nós matar


Eliseo Jacob



Part III: Intellectual Sonar

7. Other Forests: The Afro-Brazilian Literary Archive


Isis Barra Costa


8. Dismantling Coloniality via the Vocabulary of Afro-Chilean and Afro-Puerto Rican Music-Dance


Juan Eduardo Wolf

9. Xiomara Cacho Caballero: Linguistic Heritage and Afro-Indigenous Survivance on Roatán


Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar

10. Reclaiming Lands, Identity, and Autonomy: Rapping Youth in Rural Chocó, Colombia


Diana Rodríguez Quevedo




Afterword: Racial Encounters in the Americas in Times of Black Lives Matter


Mamadou Badiane



Index

About the author

Jennifer C. Gómez Menjívar is an associate professor at the University of North Texas.