Podcast Summary

New Books Network:

Interview with Teresa Delgadillo, "Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas" (U Michigan Press, 2024)

Host: Shadonna Kettle
Guest: Professor Teresa Delgadillo
Date: December 2, 2025

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode features Professor Teresa Delgadillo, who discusses her new book, Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas. The conversation explores the concept of "radical relationality," examining how Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples across the Americas form solidarities and identities beyond national borders. Delgadillo’s work draws on literature, film, music, and performance to challenge static notions of identity and illuminate dynamic, cross-hemispheric cultural connections.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Professor Delgadillo’s Intellectual Background

• PhD from UCLA (2000), following an MFA in fiction
• Early research interest: overlaps between Indigenous North American and Chicanx literatures, focusing on hybrid cultures & spatial/geographic identity
• Interdisciplinary trajectory: Gender Studies, Chicanx and Latinx Studies, Comparative Studies, and English departments

“So the interdisciplinary study has also been a really key part of my intellectual interests from grad school and since then as well.” (03:39)

Origins and Development of Geographies of Relation

• Personal/familial connection: project began with seeking out Golden Age Mexican films for her mother, leading to critical reflections on cultural memory and representation
• Revelatory moment via the film Angelitos Negros: raised complex questions about racial paradigms, mestizaje (racial mixing), and erasure in Mexican national narratives
• Gradual development: teaching courses on Afro-Latinidad, observing the emergence of Afro-Latinx literary and cultural production

“So that was sort of the seed of this project was really thinking about the cultural expression of some of these ideas that circulate...” (07:50)

Defining “Geographies of Relation” & “Radical Relationality”

• Geographies of relation: frameworks that “bring distinct and marginalized peoples into relation with each other across the hemisphere in ways that prompt critical inquiry into the ‘we’ of cultural formations.” (10:05)
• Radical relationality: attending simultaneously to intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality; challenging national and racial boundaries of identity

“For me, that radical relationality is about thinking, what is the 'we'? Who is the 'we'?... Is that 'we' exclusive or expansive?” (12:17)

Chapter Highlights

1. Antonia La Negra: Black Diaspora Consciousness in Mexico

• Explores Tonya La Negra’s role in extending Black diaspora identities and challenging mestizaje’s limitations
• Noted her popularity during her era, contrasted with her later neglect in critical scholarship
• Her performances and collaboration with Caribbean musicians brought Afro-Caribbean culture into Mexico’s national consciousness

“She really embodies this geographies of relation by making the move to insist upon...her cultural heritage as a Veracruzana.” (19:57)

2. Borderlands: Anzaldúa, Mestizaje, and Chicanx Identity

• Moves from Black Mexican consciousness to Gloria Anzaldúa’s “new mestiza consciousness,” which contests early 20th-century racial mixing ideologies that center whiteness
• Anzaldúa’s framework offers solidarity and social justice rooted in multiplicity and difference, especially for marginalized queer and dark-skinned Chicanas/os

“She is really rewriting [mestizaje] from the idea of an ideal race to the idea of a necessary subjectivity and process in order to achieve social justice.” (29:59)

3. Interlocking Geographies in Literature: Black Life in New York

• Examines Erik D. Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets, James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, and Marta Moreno Vega’s When the Spirits Dance Mambo
• By reading across “ethnic” traditions, Delgadillo reveals heterogeneity within the African diaspora, challenging essentialist readings
• Emphasizes the centrality of art-making—music, writing, performance—as spaces where these interrelations are enacted

“If we're able to think about them together, then we are able to think about African diaspora...as defined by difference as opposed to homogeneity.” (33:09)

4. Peru and the Invisibility of Afro-Peruvian Culture

• Focus on Daniel Alarcón’s War by Candlelight and the documentary Soy Andina
• Explores how these works foreground working-class, Afro-Peruvian realities and prompt broader questions about race, migration, and national identity
• Critiques national “authenticity” debates which deny Afro-Peruvian contributions to national culture

“It posits the national border as the end line for what can influence culture...That kind of emphasis on authenticity is really limiting.” (44:22)

5. The Caribbean: Cuba & Dominican Republic

• Highlights the centrality of the Afro-Caribbean struggle against colonialism—often marginalized in national and U.S. histories
• Discusses the erasure of Black Cuban Americans’ histories, the importance of transnational connections, and contributions of Caribbean feminists to hemispheric thought

“I wanted to acknowledge and to foreground the necessity of massive Afro-descendant led struggle against colonial rule in the Caribbean that...has been somewhat downplayed.” (47:18)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the enduring impact of relational solidarities:

  “These on the ground local solidarities among black, brown, indigenous populations are as constitutive of culture and art in the hemisphere as is any national framework.” — Delgadillo (53:04)

• On radical relationality:

  “They are thinking about those things together. They're never really divorced for them. And that struck me as radical...” — Delgadillo (11:44)

• On Afro-Latinx archives:

  “We need to know something about the background, history, experiences of where that population comes from in Latin America because it's different than the African American population in the US.” — Delgadillo (08:23)

• On cultural exchange and borders:

  “That kind of emphasis on authenticity is really limiting and ignores the dynamic cultural expression of, of similarly positioned diaspora and borderlands people who are in conversation with each other...” — Delgadillo (44:31)

Important Timestamps

| Time | Segment | |---------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:47 | Delgadillo’s intellectual and professional background | | 04:37 | Origins of Geographies of Relation & family influence | | 11:17 | Defining “radical relationality” | | 14:59 | Antonia La Negra and Black diaspora consciousness in Mexico | | 25:24 | Explaining Anzaldúa’s “new mestiza consciousness” | | 32:44 | Interlocking geographies: Black literature in New York | | 38:41 | Afro-Peruvian focus—literature and dance | | 46:17 | The Caribbean’s pivotal role & inclusion in the book | | 53:04 | Takeaway on Black-Brown-Indigenous solidarities | | 54:58 | Upcoming projects |

Lessons, Takeaways, and Looking Forward

• Solidarities Beyond Nation: Delgadillo stresses that Black, Brown, and Indigenous solidarities are foundational, not peripheral, to the cultural formation of the Americas. These relationships continually transform and negotiate identity, art, and belonging.

• Future Work: Delgadillo is currently extending her interest in relationality, working on photography and explorations of decoloniality and spirituality in contemporary drama.

Tone and Language

The conversation is thoughtful, generous, and deeply scholarly, while remaining accessible. Delgadillo and Kettle consistently center marginalized voices and approach questions with nuance and respect.

In Essence

Teresa Delgadillo’s Geographies of Relation offers a powerful challenge to static, national models of identity, urging us to understand the Americas through constantly shifting networks of diaspora, solidarity, and creative expression. The episode itself models this relational thinking by moving seamlessly among texts, geographies, and identities—inviting listeners to see interconnection as the heart of hemispheric culture.