1st Edition
Black USA and Spain Shared Memories in the 20th Century
During the 20th-century, Spaniards and African-Americans shared significant cultural memories forged by the profound impact that various artistic and historical events had on each other. Addressing three crucial periods (the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age, the Spanish Civil War, and Franco's dictatorship), this collection of essays explores the transnational bond and the intercultural exchanges between these two communities, using race as a fundamental critical category. The study of travelogues, memoirs, documentaries, interviews, press coverage, comics, literary works, music, and performances by iconic figures such as Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, and Ramón Gómez de la Serna, as well as the experiences of ordinary individuals such as African American nurse Salaria Kea, invite an examination of the ambiguities and paradoxes that underlie this relationship: among them, the questionable and, at times, surprising racial representations of blacks in Spanish avant-garde texts and in the press during the years of Franco’s dictatorship; African Americans very unique view of the Spanish Civil War in light of their racial identity; and the oscillation between fascination and anxiety when these two communities look at each other.
Acknowledgments
African Americans and Spaniards: "Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality" (Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego)
PART I:
ALL THAT JAZZ: TRANSLATION, FASCINATION AND ANXIETY
1. Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish: Translation, African American Culture, and the Spanish Avant-Garde, 1926-1936 (Evelyn Scaramella)
2. Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers: "Las Sinsombrero" (María Rocío Cobo Piñero)
3. Josephine Baker in Spain: The Ambivalent Reception of an African American Female Superstar (Laurence Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo)
PART II:
TRANSNATIONAL READINGS OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
4. "Not Valid for Spain:" Pan-Africanism, Sanctuary, and the Spanish Civil War (Karen Martin)
5. Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War: Memoirs of A Negro Nurse in Republican Spain (1938) (Carmen Cañete Quesada)
6. From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes: Two Perspectives of African-Americans in the Spanish Civil War (Nicole D. Price)
7. "Negroes Were Not Strange to Spain": Langston Hughes and the Spanish "Context" (Isabel Soto)
PART III:
GAZING AT EACH OTHER IN FRANCO’S SPAIN
8. Black Problems for White Travellers: The Representation of African Americans in Early Francoist New York Travel Narratives (David Miranda-Barreiro)
9. Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement: Time to Mend Fences or Time for Revenge? (Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego)
10. Alberto Villamandos: Imagining Soul America from Barcelona: Jordi Longarón and Friday Foster (Alberto Villamandos)
11. In Search of Chester Himes in Spain: Three Women. Three Landscapes (María Frías)
Conclusion: Looking Ahead to the Next Chapters (Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego)
Contributors
Biography
Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego received her PhD in Hispanic Literatures from Penn State University, and is currently Professor of Spanish at the University of Ottawa (Canada). She is the author of Entre mujeres. Política de la amistad y el deseo en la narrativa española contemporánea (Biblioteca Nueva, 2007) and the editor of the collection of essays, Memoria colonial e inmigración. La negritud en la España posfranquista (Bellaterra, 2007). She has also co-edited a 2010 special issue of the Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos entitled "Queer Space" and the collection of essays Un hispanismo para el siglo XXI. Ensayos de crítica cultural (Biblioteca Nueva, 2011). Her research project on women intellectuals in the press during Spain's Transition to democracy was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Part of this project is her edition of writer Ana María Moix's journalistic texts, Semblanzas e impertinencias (Laetoli, 2016). She was also editor-in-chief of the Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos (2014-2018).
