Miriam DeCosta-Willis, ed. Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra-Hispanic Writers.

Miriam DeCosta-Willis, ed. Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra-Hispanic Writers. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle P, 2003. 544 pp. $29.95.

In a compelling and informative introduction, Miriam DeCosta-Willis observes that the last decade has witnessed "the emergence of women writers as a new and powerful voice in Afro-Hispanic literature, so much so that it is possible to speak of the mujerizacion (womanization) of that literature." Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra-Hispanic Writers documents, examines, and announces a vibrant but neglected collection of twentieth-century writers from Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay. Featuring twenty Hispanophone writers of African descent, Daughters of the Diaspora presents a range of genres, including poetry, short stories, essays, and excerpts from novels (many translated into English for the first time). Accompanying the creative writing are brief but informative biographical introductions, as well as interviews and literary criticism by fifteen different scholars.

While Daughters of the Diaspora traces the birth of Afra-Hispanic writing to the little-known eighteenth-century Cuban writer Juana Pastor, "Black women," DeCosta-Willis notes, "did not produce a body of literature until the 1980s and 1990s." The reasons for this silence are numerous: The eighteenth century was marked by slave insurrections and rebellions (an estimated two million Africans were imported to the Spanish colonies between 1502 and 1870), whereas the nineteenth century became a battleground for emancipation and independence, followed by civil wars, revolutions, and economic instability. More recently, these twentieth-century writers have suffered from the effects of unstable and unscrupulous market places. As DeCosta-Willis notes, "Literary production is difficult in countries where there is a small publishing industry or where the works of women and Blacks are not priorities in the literary marketplace."

Not surprisingly, given the depth and length of these censorious silences, the creative writing in Daughters of the Diaspora is spring-loaded: impassioned, forthright, and fresh, but also innovative, lyrical, and sensual. While there are dangers in grouping together this diverse collection of writers, their writing (much of it poetry) explores, among other themes: masking and identity, race and sexuality, colonialism and slavery, political commitment, national identity, and class. Throughout Daughters of the Diaspora runs a collective suspicion of and resistance to Euro-American feminism. As DeCosta-Willis wryly notes, the lives of the contributors suggest that an Afra-Hispanic writer needs more than a "room of her own." "To write," DeCosta-Willis notes, "she also needs support from the literary establishment, including editors, publishers, distributors and reviewers."

Daughters of the Diaspora begins with the poetry of the Uruguayan writer Virginia Brindis de Salas (1908-1958), the first Black woman writer in South America to publish two books. Drawing on Afro-Uruguayan culture, de Salas's powerful poems highlight social injustice through the use of the pregon ("cry of the black street vendor in a poetic form"), an oral art form that dates back to slavery. The Puerto Rican poet Carmen Colon Pellot (b. 1911) explores the crises of racial identity through the figure of the mulata, speaking in a range of registers and voices. It is another poet, however, Julia de Burgos (1914-1953), known as an "icon of Puerto Rican feminism and pro-independence passion," whose subversive and empowering life and work stand out in this collection. From "Cry of the Kinky Haired Girl" ("Ay, ay, ay, I am black, pure black") to the sensual "Rio Grande de Loiza" ("Coil yourself upon my lips and let me drink you") and the provocative "Pentachrome" ("Today I want to be a man ... and rape Julia de Burgos"), her remarkably progressive and challenging poetry explodes off the page. Echoing the tragic end of Zora Neale Hurston, de Burgos suffered from poverty, alcoholism, and anonymity and was buried in an unmarked grave in Harlem. Although de Burgos has begun to be recognized by writers, including Sherezada "Chiqui" Vicioso (also in this collection), her inimitable writing deserves far wider recognition and attention.

Daughters of the Diaspora continues to offer a relentless range of unusual and innovative writing, from the surrealist-inspired poetry of the Dominican Republic writer Aida Cartagena Portalatin (1918-1994) and the Cuban novelist Marta Rojas (b. 1931), whose novel El columpio de Rey Spencer (Rey Spencer' s Swing), published in 1993, is the first in a trilogy on Cuban history, national identity, and racial origins. As DeCosta-Willis notes, her novel Santa lujuria o papeles blanco (Holy Lust or White Papers), excerpted in this collection, "is one of only two novels by a Cuban woman of African descent (Rojas in both cases)." In fact, to read Daughters of the Diaspora is to be greeted by a startling range of pioneering writers: The Costa Rican poet and essayist Eulalia Bernard (b. 1935), for example, was the first Costa Rican woman of African descent to publish a collection of poetry. And yet, with so much laudable innovation come occasional flashes of rawness, glimmers of not fully developed theoretical positions. Eulalia Bernard, for example, declares that "Rhythm--not the colour of the skin--is the essence of Africanness.... We are the only race that has rhythm." Only one writer published in this collection (the Puerto Rican Mayra Santos-Febres, b. 1966) writes about homosexuality. Again, while the suspicion of Euro-American feminism is understandable and often well-articulated, the declaration of Maria Nsue Angue (b. 1948) that feminism is "a sickness of developed countries" stops short of interrogating the movement's multi-layered complexities.

The reasons for these at times surprising comments are complex and may be in part to do with an Afra-Hispanic relationship to African American literature. A number of writers cite Toni Morrison--and in particular Alice Walker--as inspirations for female black writing. Given the economic deprivation in many countries and, for some writers included, the lack of access to contemporary (translated) theoretical works, it is not surprising that some of the views expressed are reminiscent of earlier African American ideological positions. And yet it would be wrong to suggest that these writers depend on African American literature for inspiration (as the wealth of cultural practices depicted illustrates) or that they are Hispanic prototypes of contemporary Afra-American literature. In fact, as DeCosta-Willis notes, the first-person narrative favored by many AfraAmerican writers is seldom used by black Hispanic women. While there are parallel themes (such as miscegenation, racial awareness and identity, slavery, racism, and black female sexuality), a distinctive Hispanophone voice emerges. This voice is most distinct in poetry that mines local culture, whether about the Cuban Revolution (Nancy Morejon, b. 1944) or the experimental prose-poetry of Excilia Saldana (1946-1999), which draws on the Afro-Cuban tradition. Many of the authors collected here write poignantly about dislocation and exile (such as Lourdes Casal, 1938-1981, and Maria Nsue Angue), and, while they acknowledge admiration for black American female writing, their voices are distinct and unique.

Daughters of the Diaspora is an indispensable collection for scholars, students, and enthusiasts of Hispanophone women of African decent, Caribbean literature, and women's studies. Part-anthology, part-critical survey, this pioneering book gathers together a fascinating body of neglected work. Many of the critical essays skillfully blend pertinent close readings with wider cultural background. DeCosta-Willis's criticism, in particular, is lucid and searching; her essays on "Marta Rojas's Santa lujuria and the Transformation of Cuban History into Mythic Fiction" and "The Poetics and Politics of Desire: Eroticism in Luz Argentina Chiriboga's Bajo la piel de los tambores" are engaging and incisive. The only lingering caveat is that the critical essays are often longer than the creative writing, and there is the occasional discrepancy between translated and untranslated quotations. Above all, the range of creative writing in Daughters of the Diaspora sustains interest throughout this long collection. From the forceful poetry of Virginia Brindis de Salas, "I will kill with my verses / what bullets cannot," to the explorations of racial identity in the work of Carmen Colon Pellot--

   My poetry is paradoxical
   My poetry is all in one
   in the confused amalgam of my chaos ...
   So am I: like my poetry

--Daughters of the Diaspora deserves to pave the way for this collection of neglected but dynamic group of writers. In the words of Shirley Campbell (b. 1965) that echo the energy and drive of these Afra-Hispanic writers: "I unequivocally refuse / to refute my voice."