This essay examines Raquel Cepeda’s memoire, Bird of Paradise. How I Became Latina, through the intersections between Dominican latinidad, gender, race, and hip-hop. By exposing other discourses of latinidad as performed and imagined in New York City by an afrodominicana, the memoir lays the foundation for future inquires related to Afro-Latinx identities as portrayed in contemporary fiction and nonfiction narratives by Dominican women authors in the United States. This study prompts further questioning into how the interchange between island and diaspora discourses influence the growing field of Afro-Latinx feminism. It highlights issues that are central to current and revisionist discussions of Latina and Dominican gender, ethno-racial, and cultural identity.
Reconstructing Dominican Latinidad: Intersections between Gender, Race, and Hip-Hop
Sharina Maillo-Pozo is an assistant professor of Spanish and Latinx studies in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Georgia. She specializes in Latinx and Caribbean literature and culture, with special attention to the cultural production of the Dominican Republic and its diaspora in New York City. Her work has appeared in Chasqui, Revista de literatura latinoamericana, Cuadernos de literatura, Ciberletras, The Black Scholar, Centro Journal, various edited volumes, and the Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro Latin American Biography published by Oxford University Press.
Sharina Maillo-Pozo; Reconstructing Dominican Latinidad: Intersections between Gender, Race, and Hip-Hop. Small Axe 1 July 2018; 22 (2 (56)): 85–98. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-6985783
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