“You Are the Prisoner, the Discoverer, the Founder, the Liberator”: Contextualizing Decolonial Paths of Afro-Hispanic Literature in Latin America, Equatorial Guinea and Spain
Elisa Rizo It is telling that in 2005, writer and critic Quince Duncan coined the term “Afro-Realism” (Afrorrealismo) to describe the characteristics that define many fictional works written by Black writers in Spanish America, especially after the 1980’s. Duncan highlights the following as features that define this realist literature: the fictionalization of a communal voice conveyed through the vindication of the African-based symbolism; the correction of faulty historiographical accounts; the affirmation of an ancestral communal identity; the adoption of a perspective of service for the community; and, the search for and proclamation of an Afro-descendant identity. Crucially, as Duncan points out, Afro-realist works do not belong to magical realism. Afro-realist works are structured with African-based oral traditions and spirituality at the center of the logics of the text; and, differently to magical realism literature, Afro-realist works question Western logics and aesthetics. Zapata Olivella’s monumental historical novel Chango, The Biggest Badass (Changó, el gran putas, 1983), from which I borrowed the phrase that appears in the title of this essay, clearly illustrates the spirit of “Afro-Realism.” Zapata’s novel recounts the African diaspora in the Western Hemisphere with a narrative governed by an Afro-centric world view, assumed to be the result of a dialogic relation with Indigenous and European world-views. Starting from the author’s prologue, Zapata’s text acts as a tool for empowerment and accountability for its readers: No matter what your race, culture or class is, don’t forget that you are in the land of America, the New World, the dawn of the new humanity. (…) Forget about academia, verbal tenses, and the frontiers that divide life and death, because in this saga, there are no other footsteps that the ones you leave behind: you are the prisoner, the discoverer, the founder, the liberator.[i] (56) By contesting some of the Western categories of modernity, such as the dualistic concept of life and death, academia, grammar and so forth, Zapata’s text empowers individuals to disregard and to dare to trespass Western categories that have organized historiography and, hence, the way we understand our place in history within the logics of the colonial matrix. Moreover, by inviting all peoples to read his novel, Zapata Olivella’s preface advocates a South to South (and potentially, a South to North) reflection on modernity. Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 [i] My translation. |
Essays in this Forum
Break out of the Prison House of Hierarchy!
by Mukoma Wa Ngugi A Globalectical Imagination by Ngugi wa Thiong'o World Literature and the Postcolonial: Ngugi's Globalectics and Glissant's Poetics by Duncan McEachern Yoon “You Are the Prisoner, the Discoverer, the Founder, the Liberator”: Contextualizing Decolonial Paths of Afro-Hispanic Literature in Latin America, Equatorial Guinea and Spain by Elisa Rizo Globalectics Beyond Postcoloniality by Carole Boyce Davies |