Traditional histories of Black letters in Latin America have delimited their geographic scope to the Caribbean while also omitting intertwined Afro-Indigenous discourses. Inspired by the legacy of Amefrican thinker Lélia Gonzalez, Améfrica in Letters highlights the Black poets, songwriters, novelists, essayists, and bloggers who have created a counter-multiculturalist literary history on the Latin American mainland. To capture a sense of the variety of their contributions, this book spans Mexico, Central America, the Andes, and the Southern Cone-highlighting the transcontinental nature of the legacy of Black writing and its impact beyond national boundaries. The writers examined in the volume engage with regional intellectual frameworks while putting into circulation a demand for a recalibration of the Hispanophone and Lusophone contexts in which they and other Afrodescendants reside.

Introduction: Black Writing on the Latin American Mainland: Disruptions to the Prose of MulticulturalismJennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar Part I: Afro Poetics 1. Language and the Construction of Gendered Identities in Afro-Mexican Corridos or BalladsPaulette A. Ramsay 2. A Post-Ethnic/Racial Futurescape in Wingston González's cafeína MCJuan Guillermo Sánchez Martínez 3. Antonio Preciado: Ecuador's Afrocentric PoetMichael Handelsman Part II: Lettered Outliers 4. Transatlantic Routing and Rooting in Quince Duncan's KimboGloria Elizabeth Chacón 5. The Palimpsestic Afro-Panamanian Woman in Melanie Taylor Herrera's Camino a MariatoÁngela Castro 6. Black Lives Matter in Brazil: Cidinha da Silva's #Parem de nós matarEliseo Jacob Part III: Intellectual Sonar 7. Other Forests: The Afro-Brazilian Literary ArchiveIsis Barra Costa 8. Dismantling Coloniality via the Vocabulary of Afro-Chilean and Afro-Puerto Rican Music-DanceJuan Eduardo Wolf 9. Xiomara Cacho Caballero: Linguistic Heritage and Afro-Indigenous Survivance on RoatánJennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar 10. Reclaiming Lands, Identity, and Autonomy: Rapping Youth in Rural Chocó, ColombiaDiana Rodríguez Quevedo Afterword: Racial Encounters in the Americas in Times of Black Lives MatterMamadou Badiane Index