| FT-278142-21 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Trent Masiki | Afro-Latino Memoirs and their African American Influences | 6/1/2021 - 7/31/2021 | $6,000.00 | Trent | | Masiki | | | | Boston University | Boston | MA | 02215-1300 | USA | 2021 | Hispanic American Studies | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 | Research and writing of a book examining
Afro-Latino memoirists’ use of African American aesthetics across the 20th century.
Under contract with the University of North Carolina Press, Afroethnic Renewal: Afro-Latino Memoirs and their African American Influences, examines understudied African American narrative strategies, cultural tropes, and political genealogies in contemporary Afro-Latino coming-of-age memoirs. Using literary and historical analysis, I argue that Afro-Latino memoir writers use their affiliation with the African American condition to authenticate and assert their sense of national and diasporic belonging. The coherence of Afro-Latinidad, I contend, can be better understood by analyzing the depth and scope of its influence by Black nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The book finds that Afro-Latinos are shaping US culture in ways that open and extend the conventional definitions of African American literature and identity. I am applying for an NEH Summer Stipend to research and write the chapter on Marta Moreno Vega’s memoir When the Spirits Dance Mambo: Growing Up Nuyorican in El Barrio. |