The Spanish Tinge: Literary Dialogues Between Latin America and the Black US

Description

Referring to the Latin American rhythms that ran through so many early jazz songs, Jelly Roll Morton said, “If you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish into your tunes, you’ll never get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz.” But the influence runs in the other direction, too: Latin American artists, writers, musicians and intellectuals have been deeply impacted by African-American cultural expression, especially (but not limited to) musical forms from jazz to hip-hop. This course analyzes the complicated exchanges that occurred throughout the twentieth century between Latin American writers and blacks in the United States, with a special focus on Havana, New York, New Orleans and Paris as contact zones, crucibles of cultural interaction leading to transnational artistic production. We will consider 1) how Latin American and North American blacks have forged cross-cultural alliances through literature, music, and the visual arts in order to build social and cultural agency, both in national and pan-diasporic contexts and 2) how Latin American writers of various races have used African-American cultural expressions as models for resisting and challenging hegemonic power, including notions of white supremacy at home and imperialist impositions from abroad. The goal of this course is to take on complexity, rather than shy away from it, and texts have been selected to highlight unexpected resonances and pose provocative questions, such as what it means to take African-American forms and “use” them out of their native contexts, and how the issues of gender and sexuality interact with the cultural exchanges we will explore. The course will be conducted in English, though texts will be made available in their original language, and students are encouraged to consult the original where possible.

Texts

Cabrera, Lydia. Cuentos negros

Carpentier, Alejo. Concierto barroco, Écue-Yamba-Ó, and selected poems and essays

Cortázar, Julio. Las armas secretas

Díaz, Junot. The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Guillén, Nicolás. Selected poems

Guridy, Frank. Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow

Hughes, Langston. Selected poems

Hurston, Zora Neale. Mules and Men

Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Lee, Andrea. “Anthropology”

Martí, José. “Mi raza” & “Un pueblo quema a un negro”

Sarduy, Severo. Big Bang & “El barroco y el neobarroco”

Course reader including selections from Leonardo Acosta, Houston A. Baker, Frantz Fanon, Juan Flores, Édouard Glissant, and others.