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

Summary

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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

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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.

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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)

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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)

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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 |

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Transcript

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

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[Shadonna Kettle]

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[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

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[Shadonna Kettle]

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[Marshall Poe]

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[Shadonna Kettle]

Hello everyone. Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Shadonna Kettle, your host. I'm a PhD candidate researching on reparatory justice in Latin America and the Caribbean at the Institute of the Americas, University College London. Today I'm joined by Professor Teresa Delgadillo, author of Geographies of Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas, published in 2024 by the University of Michig. Professor Delgadillo is a professor of English and Chican, XA and Latinxa Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 2011 she founded Mujere's Talk and then in 2017. This became Latinx Talk, which is an open access publication. Welcome, Professor Delgadillo.

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

Thank you, Shadona. I'm so happy to be here and I'm so grateful to you for doing this interview podcast.

[Shadonna Kettle]

We're excited to have you. So first, can we start with you sharing a bit about your intellectual and professional background?

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

I'm happy to. I finished my PhD at UCLA in 2000, and I had actually gone to do the PhD after a master of Fine Arts program in fiction, where I really began to think about some of the overlap between indigenous North American literatures and Chicanx literatures. And I was intrigued by the question of similar concerns and at times, similar settings, places, the geographical space these populations inhabited, and the questions of hybrid cultures emerging. And that led me to go and do the PhD. And since I've graduated, I have worked in a number of interdisciplinary departments, primarily Gender studies, Chicken X and Latinxa Studies, Comparative Studies, and then currently also in English. I've done spells in English as well, often courtesy appointments elsewhere. So the interdisciplinary study has also been a really key part of my intellectual interests from grad school and since then as well.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Thank you. So I'm hearing some clues there, but this leads very swiftly into the next question I had, which was how you came to write about geographies of relation. And I wondered also whether you could explain to our listeners what you mean by this term.

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

Sure. This project began quite a long time ago, actually, I think almost right at the beginning of my career. And it involved my family, which is maybe unusual or maybe not unusual, or maybe it's an example of thinking about, thinking out of our theorizing, out of our lived experiences that I so admire about feminist women of color theory, and which I employ in thinking about geographies of relation in this text. But that initial, that initial impetus was providing at the time, my mother, who has since passed, was having a yearning for seeing old golden age Mexican films. And this was in an era before streaming. And so I had to hunt down tapes or in the newer mode that they were starting to exist in DVDs, but that was still very new for her, for her to be able to enjoy them. And of course, as I was hunting them down and getting them for her, I was watching them and beginning to see parts of Mexican cultural history that I wasn't familiar with or hadn't been familiar with growing up in Wisconsin, the daughter of an immigrant family. And so that was also a revelation to me. But what struck me there was one film in particular that really struck me was Angelitos Negros with Pedro Infante and Emilia Q. And Rita Montaneres in that film as well, the Cuban actress. And it's a film about racial difference in Mexico. And the character Bedro Infante plays this like uber Mexicano figure, the singing, musical, singing star who often very, very virile, masculine figure that marries a very light skinned woman. And it turns out that the light skinned woman actually has her mother. Her mother is a black woman who is posing as the nanny to her child and posed as her nanny through all her life and now continues to be the nanny to her child. So there's this hidden racial history that the film is dealing with. And I was, as I was watching it, I was so troubled by how the film dealt with that it raised so many questions for me about these paradigms of mestizaje as the ideal Mexican national subject and what that erased and what that made impossible to acknowledge and all of that. So that was sort of the seed of this project was really thinking about the cultural expression of some of these ideas that circulate discourses that circulate nationally and then also thinking about how they're circulating hemispherically. I mean, here I am, you know, digging up these films for my mother in Wisconsin in the latter half of the 20th century, right? To remember to enjoy something from her home country. So the way that those cultural products travel and circulate and what they mean to people in the different contexts that they are in versus, you know, when they, where they saw them first, if they did. And all of that really started got me thinking about this question. And then I worked on it very slowly over the intervening period by I developed a course on Afro Latinidad. And then I thought okay, this is a way to explore it. And I started teaching. Half that course would almost always deal with Afro Latin America as the background to thinking about, about Afro Latinx. What does it mean? If we want to think about this diverse part of the Latinx population in the US 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 and so that course was in the, in, in the earlier years was almost always half Afro Latin America and Afro Latinx. And then slowly developed a greater archive of materials that could work in that course. And realizing and also seeing more authors beginning to explore this in Latinx literature and cultural production, more authors beginning to think about what is black Latinx culture, experience history and beginning to create art around it that can be explored in the class. And so that evolved into what the book became, was like, okay, then there's really, now there's a body of work here to think about linking these two that is valuable for us to consider.

[Shadonna Kettle]

That's so interesting. Thank you. Especially the part where you were talking about developing this book project very slowly, taking your time with it and even building a course around it, picking up on some of the things that you said then. So I'm going to cite this from your book where you write that geographies of relation 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 and critical awareness of history's experience, experiences and ideologies that impact the possibility of community. And then you call this radical relationality, which I absolutely love. And I wondered if you could expand on this particular term.

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

Thank you so much for the question and for picking up on that term. One of the things that, for me, that I began to notice in a number of the cultural productions that I am examining in this book and over that process, was the way that race ethnicity intersected with gender. And I wanted to attend to both of those, rather than separate only the consideration of race ethnicity, just rather than separating out the consideration of gender and sexuality and the consideration of race ethnicity separately, to think about those together. Because it struck me that in fact, what these artists, what. What artists are and. And writers and filmmakers are. Are pursuing in. In the text that I'm looking at are they are thinking about those things together. They're never really divorced for them. And that struck me as radical in a way that. That feminist women of color were saying right in the 70s and 80s and 90s, prompting us to. To think about together. And so I, I saw echoes of that and. And wanted to attend to that. But I think that for me, that radical relationality is about thinking that what is the we? Who is the we? How do we? Is the we exclusive or expansive? And is that we defined by strict borders of nation, of race, or of gender? Or is that we one that is constantly negotiated by attending to the ways that all of those things impact us and either push us together or pull us apart? And that also struck me as something happening in this. In this archive of text that is always sorted in, in play. What is the we who are the we more than the. I like the. The individual, but. But that really thinking beyond the self, but the self as part of something else, I think that is really present in all of these texts. It may Be. I mean, and. And that. So that really struck me across the hemisphere and it struck me as a very different way of thinking about life and cultural production and art in our hemisphere than we might normally take of thinking about the national frame only.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Great, thank you. So thinking about the structure of the book, you first of all bring readers to Mexico where we have the wonderful opportunity of meeting Tonya La Negra. Antonia La Negra's performances, you suggest, create or created a form of black diaspora consciousness that exceeded Mexican state narratives of mestizahi. Why do you think that back then she received such little critical attention and also critically among scholars? And also how did she embody alternative geographies of relation in an age that celebrated such national cohesion, do you think?

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

I was really drawn to thinking about Tonya Negra the More I was looking at Mexican film of that era and I started out by trying to see as much film as possible that featured Mexican black actors or black actors in Mexican film, not all of whom were Mexicanos, but some came from black actors from other Latin American and Central American countries who made a career in Mexican film in this era. And that was really began to struck me as, oh, this is really significant. And I agree with you. She received little critical attention. I mean, that's something that emerges in this study is that she has received. I think part of it is she is in the moment in which she's living. She is wildly popular and very well known. She has a recording career. She is touring as a performer with her band that includes her cousins and family members. And she's also an actress performing in multiple films over 20. And she always gets billing in the films, top billing. Billing, right. Or second billing or appearing as herself. Tonya La Negra, I mean, in the credits, right? Her. Her on screen Persona, her performative Persona. Tonya La Negra is front and center in all of them. And that I think is really striking because it suggests a prominence that then isn't borne out in the later decades of critical assessment. Right. Of the period. So I think it is a gap in Mexican cinematic studies that there hasn't been more attention to her. And it's a gap that I wanted to fill. And it's a gap that I think exists because of the way many of the films that era were viewed. The Rumbera films or the films about the influence of Caribbean music have often been read in cinema studies studies of that era as films that were about the foreign or the exotic, that were films about this other kind of influence and not read as Films that are promoting or thinking about this aspect of Mexican national culture. And in part, one of the things I think many of the. Many of the critical work overlooks and there's some newer work on this is the Mexican national project at that point of fully incorporating all region thinking about the regional diversity of the country and the regional cultural specificity. So there's a. There is a whole Mexican national project in. In this era as well of it's sort of a Mexican multicultural effort. Right. These are the dances and customs of this region. These are the dances and customs that. So there's a whole exploration of. Of this. That many of that those films also fit into. So they aren't only about urban fallen women underclass. They are also very much a part of this effort to incorporate all of Mexican national culture into this sense of a multicultural nation. I think that's part of a project at that point. So there's a way that her work is both fitting into that narrative, right? Fitting into. Yes, this is a part of. This is part of what constitutes the Mexican national subject. Yes, this is also Mexicanidad. At the same time that it isn't quite entirely accepted as part of Mexican. At the same time that the changes to. In migration to urban centers, that nightclub life are also viewed sort of. Also viewed negatively and perceived negatively by many in the culture. And so that negative attachment also happens with some of the films. So there's contradictory things happening in the films and multiple kind of locationalities or positionalities I think are staked out in the films. She really embodies this geographies of relation by making the move to insist upon incorporate her cultural heritage as a Veracruzana, a native of this region of Mexico, well known for the Caribbean influence, its ties to the Caribbean larger. The fact that her grandfather was from Haiti that that she participates with works with a number of Cuban musicians who come over. And she participates in bringing that Caribbean scene to the capitol via her performance and via her film work. Extending the possibilities for other Caribbean and African diaspora artists and musicians to participate in this moment and sometimes get credit in the screen credits in the films, certainly to participate in the performance culture and nightlife culture of the city. And so I think she works in both directions, right. To bring in the Caribbean and also to claim a space in the Mexican national sphere that has been previously overlooked.

[Marshall Poe]

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[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

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[Shadonna Kettle]

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[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

Yeah, I enjoyed thinking about the dress and the gesture in her performances. And one of the, you know, one of the problems with, with studying her is there isn't. There aren't archives on her. There aren't, there isn't a lot on her in her era. She was, I think early in her career she did speak to the press and then after that sort of didn't is my understanding that there isn't a great deal of and so there seemed to have been a desire for privacy, perhaps given the multiple ways in which she was misinterpreted or read, that perhaps contributed to some of that. But she does have an enduring legacy in Mexico and people who still continue to revere and celebrate her music and her contributions.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Excellent. Thank you. So flowing nicely from chapter one, we move to chapter two, where you write about Chicanx and Mexican borderlines. So moving from the Black diaspora consciousness of Antonia La Negra to a new mestiza consciousness proposed by Gloria Ansaldua, I wondered if you could talk about how these consciousnesses oppose this one dimensional view of mestizaje or la raza cosmica. And are there tensions or were there tensions about the new mestiza consciousness?

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

Yes, I guess maybe now that I'm thinking about it as I'm talking with you, I guess probably the first two chapters are are following that parallel in my former classes of Afro Latin America first and then thinking about Black Latinx. Although that second chapter on Saldua and Sandra Cisneros's work does think about Black Latinidad in Mexican American and Chicanx cultures in ways that has not really been explored before. There's been very little work on thinking about Black Chicanx or Black Mexican, Black Mexican Americans. One of the things that Anzaldua is and so one of the things I wanted to talk about in this chapter is to really go back and closely read and pay attention to what Ansaldu is actually saying to us about mestizahe. And in what ways is she engaging with ideas of mestizahe circulating in the early 20th century in Latin America? And in what ways is she contesting, revising, challenging, or as my colleague Rafael Pedestone says, troping that idea in Latin American discourse? These ideas of mestizaje in the early 20th century that were very powerful throughout Latin America, that posit the ideal national subject as a racial mixture of all of the races of Latin America, indigenous Asian, African, Hispano from Spain. And these ideas of mestizaje almost always, always privileged the light skinned Hispano subject. And Vasconcellos is actually pretty forthright about this, that the Hispano Spanish part of the mestizaje is the superior part of the mestizaje and the part that most matters, I guess, and that leads to all kinds of policies of blanquamiento in Latin America carried out through immigration quotas for European versus other. I Mean, it is, quote, quite a racial exclusionary model of both national identity and racial. National identity. And this is something that. But it's so prominent, right? It's so important, right? It so circulates, it begins to fall apart, to come under attack in the latter half of the 20th century throughout the Latin America as societies realize what this means, particularly in relation to the exclusion of indigenous, but then also in relation to the exclusion of African diaspora peoples from national subjectivity, from equal opportunity in all kinds of ways. And then we begin to see cultural productions that are really, really addressing them. When Anzaldu was writing in the 1980s about the. She puts forward this idea of the new mestiza consciousness and nu is very important in that formulation. It is new, right? She is not adopting the Vasconcellian ideal of the mestizo subject in which the Hispano Spanish part is the most important and the other racial contributions, right. Or other parts of the racial mixture matter, or in its kind of worse formulation are being civilized through their connection to. And instead she is beginning to see that there are these interrelationships among the dark skinned, the African diaspora, the indigenous and Asian in throughout Latin America and that that's what informs her thinking about being a dark skinned queer woman in the United States. If she's going to look for where do I come from? Who do I align with? Who are my people for her, that dark skinned queer subject who doesn't speak the perfect Spanish of belonging because her Spanish language has been kept from her because of her existence in the United States or has been looked down upon, she's been unable to. So her Spanglish disqualifies her from belonging to either the US or Mexico. So where are her people? Her people are not the elite light skinned of another country. Of either country. Of either country, right? She's looking elsewhere for who are those people? And in thinking about Vasconcelos idea, she is really rewriting that from the idea of an ideal race to the idea of a necessary subjectivity and process in order to achieve social justice, right? So she's thinking about what is that consciousness and process, what's the theory and the method that can get us to seeing the multiplicity of the Americas, the multiplicity of who we are and the ways that the we matter in that formulation, in contrast to a vision of us being subsumed by something else that is so prominent in. In ideas of mestizahi that were circulating in early and mid 20th century in Latin America.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Wow, that is just so interesting and revealing. Really, of Anzaldua's theorizing of this relationality, this radical relationality as well, that you're bringing in here with the book. So moving across the geographies to the U.S. right, so you're reading down these mean streets if Beale Street Could Talk and When the Spirits Dance Mambo as interlocking geographies of black life across New York. What does placing these texts into shared spatial relation reveal that reading them in separate ethnic literary traditions might obscure?

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

Yes, I came to this, thinking about this, and these texts I encountered at very different moments, but I came to thinking about them. What was so fascinating to me is that they're all set in New York and they all actually do share some geographies in New York. They are happening in similar, if not the same geographic spaces or crossing into each other's geographic spaces within the. Within the city of New York. What also struck me about thinking about them together was if we're able to think about them together, then we are able to think about African diaspora. Difference of African diaspora as defined by difference as opposed to homogeneity. And thinking about them in separate literary traditions might lead us to. To think more about homogeneity than difference, but to think about the difference, as Stuart hall calls us to, and others, about the difference that diaspora encompasses. It's not a homogenous essentialist category or theory, but rather is trying to. Is dealing with and thinking about that proliferation of difference that occurs and yet also works to cohere. Like, how does it work to cohere a particular kind of experience in artistic production. The other thing that really struck me about these together, thinking about them together, was how much they are emphasizing the question of artistic production, the speaking to and speaking about the way that in Thomas's memoir, Down these Means True Streets, the act of writing itself, the act of articulating this difference and thinking about what his relationship is to both African Americans and Puerto Ricanos, which is what he thought he was at the time, and then later learns that he's also, I think, Cubano. His father was Cubano, but also so that. But then in Beale street and When Spirits Dance, we have two central characters who are artists in Beale Street. Fani Alonso, who is an artist who gets caught, right, wrongly accused and caught up in the carceral system. But when Spirits Dance Mambo, we have Cotito, the main character, who is an abutting artist, musically and performatively, and thinking about that in her. And so they both also convey to us the significance of. Of artistic traditions in African diaspora communities and what these arts mean in terms of cultural cohesion, what they mean, what they convey about a way of life, what influences they inform them, and where those influences come from. We hear Alonzo talk about that, and Tish in Ifield street could talk, and we also hear that in Spirits Dance Mambo. So I thought that putting them together also really helps us to think about the space of art making and the space of literary making as a space of making the overlap, making attention to difference part of who we are, making that recognition of multiplicity a part of who we are. Toast the holidays in a new way and raise a glass of Rumchata, a delicious creamy blend of horchata with with rum. Enjoy it over ice or in your coffee. Rumchata. Your holiday cocktails just got sweeter. Tap or click the banner for more Drink responsibly. Caribbean rum with real dairy cream, natural and artificial flavors. Alcohol 13.75% by volume 27.5 proof. Copyright 2025 Agave Loco Brands, Pojoaquee, Wisconsin.

[Shadonna Kettle]

All rights reserved.

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

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[Shadonna Kettle]

Thank you for that. So kind of staying with the US but bringing in Peru now where first two in the next chapter. And you cite Charles Henry Rowell who observes that except for Susana Vaca and the members of the Santa Cruz family, very few of us in the English speaking world are acquainted with Black Paris. So I'm very curious to know why you chose to look at Peru and more specifically the Peruvian American author Daniel Alarcon and his collections of short stories War by Candlelight, City of Clowns, created from a story in the War by Candlelight collection and Mitch Tipley Litsky's documentary film Soy and Thena. And I was super interested in the Peruvian chapter because of work that I had previous done on Afro Peruvians and had the opportunity to meet Susanna Bacca. So very curious to know about this.

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

That must have been exciting to be able to meet her. And is that work on reparations in Afro Peru?

[Shadonna Kettle]

It was on the Afro Proven social mobilization.

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

Yeah. Fantastic.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Very much connected. Yeah.

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

I only know A little bit about that. But I do recall looking up, as I was reading War by Candlelight and then War by Candlelight and Soyandina appear closely 2005, 2007. And so they were both very much on my mind because I was struck when I read War by Candlelight by how much race was important to how characters were seen, what was the character's experience, how significant the racial landscape is in War by Candlelight and how significant that was both in Peru and in the US Because War by Candlelight goes back and forth. Some stories are sent to Peru and some are sent in the U.S. yes. So in that way. And they're all, mostly these stories are all about working class people, people in the. In the. Who aren't traveling with the ease of elite visas, but often traveling are crossing borders without that in more precarious conditions. One story in War by Candlelight, you have a character who overstays visa because the situation is so dire back in Peru. And so it's sort of, I guess, in the Zigmyc Bauman phrase, right? If they were vagabonds and travelers, right? His stories are about vagabonds, right? Not that they are vagabonds, but in that language or that distinction that Bauman's making about who has ease of travel in this global society. And so that really struck me. And Soyendina is this North American woman who seemingly has more privilege because she can travel there legally on a Fulbright right, to study dance. And yet what she's choosing to study is an aspect of her own heritage of which she knew very little about. At her aunt's house one year, she discovers this thing called Afro Peruvian dance. And she is, as a dance student already she's deeply intrigued by, like, how did I not know about this particular dance tradition and what is it and where do I learn about it? Which she goes back to study. But she's very much a working class subject herself in New York. And we get a sense of that. We get a sense of her as that subject in the film and what that opportunity of the Fulbright means to someone like her and the. And what it opens up for her in terms of learning about this part of Peru that is known, as Raul says is known so, so very little outside of. Outside of Peru. So I was intrigued by how these authors are wanting to explore that aspect of Peru that we don't know much about, but also how they're linking that interest and concern with. With Afro Peru with thinking about dark skinned and working class more broadly. And that was Fascinating to me. And it led me to learn, I did, I. I learned a lot about Afro Peru in the course of that. And I like that these texts make me do that. Right. Make readers do that. You want to engage, you want to find out more. You are prompted to ask questions and discover and to think about what that colonial history was, what is the nation building history of that, what is that post conflict history of that? To think in all of those different periods about what that has meant. And one of the things that really struck me in thinking about the dance forms was really realizing how deeply Peruvian national dance forms, including the national revered dances, are from the Afro Peruvian experience. These are informed by Afro Peruvian culture. And I wonder how many people know that or realize that. I was also struck by how important contact with African Americans who were engaged in that same endeavor in the middle mid 20th century was important to the development of an Afro Peruvian cultural scene in Peru. And while there are some who, I guess there's. There's some scholars who seemed in the literature who seem to be more concerned about, well, is that an inauthentic influence? Are, are the Santa. Is the Santa Cruz family adopting a consciousness of, of being African diaspora that is imported by contact with African Americans or finding African American dance? And in some ways there's discussions about, oh, were some of these dances influenced by Caribbean by the Caribbean and therefore, and for some, and therefore not Peruvian. And I think that that is really a false dichotomy. It posits the national border as the end line for what can influence culture and what can influence national culture and, or minor cultures within the, within the national culture. And I think that 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 and are engaged in creating art that speaks to their very different experiences. So I think that that was also really valuable for me to think about. And I talk a little bit about that as well in the chapter, which I think is useful for all of us to think about.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Yeah, thank you for that. So we now migrate to the Caribbean and I'm again keen, very interested to know how the Caribbean, how you decided on writing about Cuba and the Dominican Republic in the text and why it was important to particularly include these two countries. And tagging onto that, how you would describe, I mean, you kind of alluded to it earlier about, particularly where you were writing about your course, where you spoke to the Afro Latin American and then the Afro Latinx experiences. How about those The Afro Caribbean experiences, I wonder if you can talk to that kind of relationality and some of those multiplicities that exist there.

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

This was, there's more work on the Afro Caribbean and more attention to Afro Latinidades in the Caribbean. And so this was a little, I entered it a little hesitantly because there is so much work there and yet it's so important because it's in the Caribbean where, where it's in the Caribbean where black Caribbeans end colonial rule. This is so important. So that space, that history, that, that is so important to all of the Americas as this, you know, that last moment of ending colonial rule, I think is just, is, is, is critical. And I wanted to acknowledge and to foreground the necessity of massive Afro descendant led struggle against colonial rule in the Caribbean that we don't, we would trust, which has been somewhat, somewhat downplayed in relation to when we think about the historic figures who are most often remembered and lauded for that struggle here, Jose Marti stands out as opposed to some of the Afro descended leaders of the struggle against colonial rule like Antonio Maceo and, and others. And so this, I mean part of that has to do with the fact that Martius was a prolific writer. There's a lot more we have from him as well. But I wanted to think about that and wanted to think about how Afro descended peoples in the Caribbean, particularly Afro Cubans, Afro Cuban Americans and black Dominican Americans think about and thought about that, that lineage and that history and that experience and how do they write about it in the literature that they're creating. So this chapter, that last chapter in the Caribbean deals some with tracing the influence of black leaders and black thought and black social movement on Jose Marti. So thinking about what's influencing him and making his thought possible of black leadership of the struggle, which is important. And then what are black Cuban Americans and black saying about or how are they writing about this history and acknowledging that erasure of the black Cuban experience that happens. And so I looked at some mid century texts as well as late 20th century play to think about those, to think about those and also think about a longer history of one Cuban American presence in the US that is a black Cuban American presence that dates back to the 19th century, which is very little acknowledged in Latinx history or US history, more so now. But this is I think a newer understanding and also thinking about that enduring transnational connection that these texts speak to us about. Both texts about the 19th century, early 20th and middle 20th century, about the Cuban American experience and black Cuban American experience are constantly highlighting for us that transnational connection between nations that unfortunately gets cut off by embargo, U.S. embargo or severely challenged by U.S. embargo. And then it felt like, you know, Nellie Rosario's novel Song of the Water Saints so beautifully tied together the question of gender, race and ethnicity. And thinking about the response to US occupation in early 20th century and the enduring legacy of that for gender, race, ethnicity, that I felt like as brief as my treatment is of that in the conclusion, I thought it was important to include it for us to also think about how black feminist thinkers from the Caribbean are helping us to rethink that history and to recognize their own lineages of resistance and struggle in the region.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Thank you for sharing that. It very much makes me think about. So as you mentioned, Afro Caribbean kind of feminist thinking or women thinkers about Lelia Gonzalez in Brazil, who always wrote about this. I'midad the bringing of kind of Africa and the Americas together, but also thinking about the other identities that come into that and specifically coming from a feminist perspective and seeing that from the Dominican Republic was very enlightening for me.

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

And I am just learning about a mefricanidad that she proposed and what that represented, which I think is really another fascinating story to explore.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Yes, very much so. So I'm kind of coming to the end of my questions, but the book, you know, continuously shows how diaspora is lateral. It's negotiated across the Americas. And throughout our conversation you've shown the various ways in which the text, the music, the.

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

Film.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Have brought those into conversation. So if listeners take away one lesson about black brown indigenous solidarities and how they actually form on the ground, what would you want it to be?

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

I think the one lesson, let's see. I think the one lesson would be that, that 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. That these have always been a feature of life and therefore of art in the Americas. And if we can interrogate, if we can spend some time researching and thinking about the influences that each of those that that solidarity, each of the influences from black brown indigenous brings to cultural formation, that we will have a more enriched understanding understanding of the arts and cultures of the Americas that attends to what's unique about the peoples of this hemisphere and what's unique about the long standing presence of peoples in this hemisphere that I think is really, really important for us to attend to beyond the national framework. So I think, think maybe that would be it.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Thank you. That's excellent. And finally you mentioned that. I guess this book is a labor of love. It was slowly nurtured and produced. Do what's coming next after Geographies of Relation. Do you have any other projects lined up?

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

Thank you. I am actually right now working on a project on seeing relation relationally on photography. And this has been really a joy to think about. And then I'm also working on thinking about decoloniality and relationality in representations of spirituality and religion, in drama, in play, in two contemporary, particularly two contemporary play, African American and Latinx play. So right now I'm working on these kinds of, I guess, further extensions of Geographies of Relation, but in different media medium. And that is also really wonderful to think about the utility of this idea in those spheres and explore these new dimensions of relational artistic practice and work across the hemisphere.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing insights from your book Geographies of Relation. It's been a gift to share and learn from you, so thank you very much and we very much look forward to your upcoming projects.

[Professor Teresa Delgadillo]

I'm so honored that you included me in the podcast. Thank you, Shadonna. I really appreciate your really wonderful questions.

[Shadonna Kettle]

Thank you.