The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature

Interweaving the influential voices of African, Caribbean, and Latinx authors, this book challenges eurocentric notions of World Literature.

Sarah M. Quesada (Author)

9781009078139, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 July 2025

304 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.495 kg

'Through impressive fieldwork and archival research, Quesada excavates the imprint of African epistemologies, histories, spiritual practices, and proverbs on Latinx writing. … In blazing trails overgrown with racism and neglect, Quesada's precise prose engenders new connections among them. … Ultimately, [the work] makes an airtight case for the significance of Latin-African conjunctions.' Michael Dowdy, Latino Studies

The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature unearths a buried African archive within widely-read Latinx writers of the last fifty years. It challenges dominant narratives in World Literature and transatlantic studies that ignore Africa's impact in broader Latin American culture. Sarah Quesada argues that these canonical works evoke textual memorials of African memory. She shows how the African Atlantic haunts modern Latinx and Caribbean writing, and examines the disavowal or distortion of the African subject in the constructions of national, racial, sexual, and spiritual Latinx identity. Quesada shows how themes such as the 19th century 'scramble for Africa,' the decolonizing wars, Black internationalism, and the neoliberal turn are embedded in key narratives. Drawing from multilingual archives about West and Central Africa, she examines how the legacies of colonial French, Iberian, British and U.S. Imperialisms have impacted on the relationships between African and Latinx identities. This is the first book-length project to address the African colonial and imperial inheritance of Latinx literature.

1. Fear: Junot Díaz's zombies and les contorsions extraordinaires in 'Monstro'
2. Commodification: Badagry and the African safari of Achy Obejas's Ruins
3. Obliteration: Gabriel García Márquez and his Angolan chronicles of a 'Latin-African' death foretold
4. Archival distortion: The Chicano-Congo Relación of Tomás Rivera and Rudolfo Anaya.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literary theory [DSA]