The Mulatto Republic offers a compelling look at Dominican anti-Haitianism and Hispanophilia. The book examines these subjects from the perspective of the racial, gender, and class dynamics that developed in San Pedro de Macorís in the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. The choice of this sui generis province evinces April Mayes's intricate understanding of Dominican history and culture. The curious use of the word mulatto in the book's title is the result of Mayes's conscious attempt to reinscribe an old and lesser-known utopian vision of dominicanidad that was (and may be again) ready to take in blackness and historical black resistance alongside or in place of its privileged adoption of a de-Africanized narrative of racial mixing. The title epitomizes Mayes's main objective: producing more nuanced accounts of the ontology of Dominican racism. This nuance is more often than not absent in the psychologized and decontextualized...
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