Rachel Afi Quinn on Negotiating Mixed-race Identity
Cover illustrations by Lucia Mendez Rivas.
“I no Black; I Dominican,” Godfrey, the Nigerian-American comedian mockingly says in a YouTube interview that went viral on Instagram in 2020 and then again in 2022. In the United States, this is a somewhat common judgment against dark-skinned Black Dominicans and other dark-skinned Latinx people. Many in the U.S. formulate and process race differently than people elsewhere. They might not understand why Dominicans rarely identify as Black. Sure, often embedded within these statements is anti-Blackness. Yet, scholars such as Ginetta E.B. Candelario, Silvio Torres-Saillant, and Lorgia García Peña have argued that a confluence of factors shaped Dominican racial identity, including the legacies of U.S. empire, the Spanish colonial casta system, colonial borders in the island of Hispaniola/Ayiti, and the project of Hispanidad the Dominican governments have brandished throughout the years. Together, these scholars, among many others, problematize the idea of a universal Black experience, while inviting us to consider distinct shades and experiences that exist within mixed-race identities.
“The reality is that while in the United States there are particular ways of reading Blackness, when it comes to Latinx mixed-race people, this does not necessarily translate across hemispherically, causing slippages in readings of race.”
The reality is that while in the United States there are particular ways of reading Blackness, when it comes to Latinx mixed-race people, this does not necessarily translate across hemispherically, causing slippages in readings of race. Even within the amalgamation of experiences that Latinx people have in the U.S., there are factors to consider about reading and performance of identities. How about the role of experiential context? How does who we are with, and our personal histories inform what we understand about Blackness and race? What is the influence of accents, fashion, sexual orientation, and gender on racial constructs? How do transnational dialogues and neoliberalism complicate these racial identitarian constructs? These are some of the questions Rachel Afi Quinn tends to in her book Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo.
Quinn, an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies and the Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Houston, first published this book in 2021. Now, three years later, she teamed up with a small Dominican press, Anticanon RD, to translate this work into Spanish. Siendo la dominicana offers a prime opportunity to review this necessary book, not only for its elucidation on the construction of Dominican women’s race and identity in Santo Domingo, but for its open invitation that offers insight into the negotiations and reassessment of self that people go through when they are a part of a mixed-race society.
We currently live in a time and place where books and articles looking at mixed-race identity, especially through the construction and performance of Blackness, are plentiful. Scholars, activists, and artists have resources to access scholarly production on Blackness. When first reading Being la Dominicana, I was pleased to encounter an analysis of the construction of Dominican identity in relationship with race, gender, and sexual orientation through the lens of visual discourse.
“While the focus of Quinn’s book is Santo Domingo’s visual culture, I would argue the approach to the author’s theorizations recognizes the negotiations and reexamines the complexities of experiences for people in a mixed-race society.”
While the focus of Quinn’s book is Santo Domingo’s visual culture, I would argue the approach to the author’s theorizations recognizes the negotiations and reexamines the complexities of experiences for people in a mixed-race society. The women she engages throughout the text contextually oscillate between negotiations and balancing, a practice that Quinn terms “see/saw.” Quinn notes that Dominican women’s mixed-raced identities are in constant flux and often see/saw in relation to others on a hierarchical scale of power. This relational movement constructs racial meaning and reproduces “hierarchies of color, class, gender, [and] sexuality.” Throughout each chapter we see these racial meanings change. Dominican women reassess these categories depending on whether they live in the United States or in other countries, who they are next to, how others perceive their race, or even their fashion choices.
Another highlight throughout this book is Quinn’s centering of these women’s theorizations and observations as crucial to comprehending what this “see/sawing” of race does concerning identity in Santo Domingo. The reflections of the over 30 women in this book produce a theory of its own in regard to transnational identity and its contextual malleability, and Quinn’s methods allow this to shine through. The care and conversations held around Quinn’s position as an academic doing this work were refreshing. In the introduction, Quinn frames her book as an interdisciplinary project in conversation with fields such as cultural and visual studies and through a transnational feminist theory framing.
Chapter 1 explores how different sites in Santo Domingo, including social media and messaging, influence the construction and performances of identity for the women who take part in the project. Chapter 2, named “Me Quedo con la Greña,” dives into how popular culture, transnational networks, and experiences shape perceptions of other women’s race and identity, alongside their own. In Chapter 3, Quinn further complicates the ideas of mixed-race societies by questioning who can transgress, rebel, and still gain acceptance as a good citizen. Chapter 4 refocuses on the self-theorizations of the women she interviewed and their experiences of race. Chapter 5 examines a local production of Federico Lorca’s La Casa de Bernarda Alba and how the actresses’ staging and reflections produce and undo Dominican racial logic in this surrealist play. Finally, Chapter 6 looks at feminist mobilizations in Santo Domingo for reproductive rights and against gender-based violence.
“This project can teach us about the complications present in many of our Latinx communities, which are under the heavy influence of politics of identity and race from our mixed-race societies. ”
This project can teach us about the complications present in many of our Latinx communities, which are under the heavy influence of politics of identity and race from our mixed-race societies. The book expands on why “whiteness” for us “may need to be confirmed by lineage” and how often “class becomes a qualifier” for our understanding of race. It considers how “the ability to transform one’s identity may mean acting more ‘feminine,’” as see/sawing into a cis-heterosexual white desirable mode.
For those of us who work at the intersections of the humanities or those curious to learn how identities come to be, it is a fertile moment to engage the nuance of spatial, social, and political contexts, and how these mold identitarian conceptions in a transnational world. This text provides methods to acknowledge how transnational exposure and social context can shift a person’s perceived identity. The recent translation and revision into Spanish promises to expand the audience of this project. Although you may not cry as I did when reading the words of people I admire and who are my peers, I am assured this book will offer different perspectives on the “I no Black” moments that occur in the U.S.
