Professor Lorgia García Peña discusses her upcoming book, Translating Blackness: Latinx Colonialities in Global Perspective.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Black Visual Culture at the Institute for African American Affairs.
This is an in-person and virtual event. Upon registering for an in-person event in our RSVP sign up, you will receive instructions on how to upload proof of covid-19 vaccination for easier access. If you choose not to do a pre-arrival upload, you will be required to present proof of vaccination and ID at the door. If you have any accessibility needs for this event, please email us at latinxproject@nyu.edu.
“In Translating Blackness Lorgia García Peña considers Black Latinidad in a global perspective in order to chart colonialism as an ongoing sociopolitical force. Drawing from archives and cultural productions from the United States, the Caribbean, and Europe, García Peña argues that Black Latinidad is a social, cultural, and political formation—rather than solely a site of identity—through which we can understand both oppression and resistance. She takes up the intellectual and political genealogy of Black Latinidad in the works of Frederick Douglass, Gregorio Luperón, and Arthur Schomburg. She also considers the lives of Black Latina women living in the diaspora, such as Black Dominicana guerrillas who migrated throughout the diaspora after the 1965 civil war and Black immigrant and second-generation women like Mercedes Frías and Milagros Guzmán organizing in Italy with other oppressed communities. In demonstrating that analyses of Black Latinidad must include Latinx people and cultures throughout the diaspora, García Peña shows how the vaivén—or, coming and going—at the heart of migrant life reveals that the nation is not a sufficient rubric from which to understand human lived experiences.”
“I am a Professor of Latinx Studies at Tufts University, the co-founder of Freedom University Georgia, and the author of three books: Translating Blackness (2022), Community as Rebellion (2022) and The Borders of Dominicanidad (Duke 2016). I am the co-editor of the Texas University Press series, Latinx: the Future is now and the co-director of Archives of Justice. I write and teach in English and Spanish about the intersections of blackness, colonialism and migration, centering Black Latinx lives.” - Professor Lorgia García Peña