¡Manteca! An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets ed. by Melissa Castillo-Garsow (review)

Inspired by Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores’s groundbreaking Afro-Latin@Studies Reader (2010), editor Melissa Castillo-Garsow continues the work of exploring Afro-Latinidad through ¡Manteca! An Anthology of Afro-Latin@Poets. The anthology features a wide and balanced array of male and female poets, from canonical Afro-Latino poets such as Tato Laviera, Sandra María Esteves, and Miguel Piñero to emerging writers like Nicole Sealey, Natasha Carrizosa, and Elizabeth Acevedo.

Castillo-Garsow points out that the anthology’s title comes from a 1947 Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo, and Gil Fuller collaboration of the same name. For the editor, “‘Manteca’ not only represents the significance of African American and Latin@collaborations, but the beginnings of what can be thought of as a distinct Afro-Latin@sound in the United States” (xix). It is unsurprising, then, the role that music and rhythm play in how some poets espouse their Afro-Latinidad. For instance, Peggy Robles-Alvarado relies on music as an integral part of her identity formation: “vuelvo y repito / que aunque no nací en / Puerto Rico / la bomba y su ritmo / está encarnado a mi ser” (55). At the same time, Gustavo Adolfo Aybar’s poem frustrates the ways in which rhythm shapes his identity. In “Wallflower Mambo,” he uses the titular dance as a haunting allusion to Dominican history. Therein a woman questions the poetic voice’s Dominican identity because he steps on her feet twice while dancing. The line plays off an essentialist stereotype that all Dominicans are superb dancers and, therefore, he should not make those mistakes. The two missteps remind him of how the Dominican Republic had to endure two American interventions and two battles of independence from Haiti. The poem culminates with an affirmation of his Dominican identity, grounded in African, Taíno, and Spanish roots. Ending the poem with “This is my Merengue swing. This is my Dominican dance,” Aybar claims his singular experience within a larger Dominican identity (6; my emphasis).

Although references to music appear in several poems, the writers in this collection articulate Afro-Latinidad in myriad ways, moving beyond any sort of monolithic experience. Ariana Brown’s “A Quick Story” moves seamlessly across time and geography to discuss her parents’ relationship against the backdrop of a lesser-told Texas history. For instance, the following stanza highlights a first encounter between her parents: “Wilbert Tyrone / Brown III wound up / next to my mama / in Air Force basic training. / Said he was ‘from an island’. / Nobody’s fool, my mama / rolled her eyes and said, / ‘Galveston ain’t no island’” (87). Brown’s following stanza builds off of cultural encounters through history: “Galveston’s own Karankawa and Akokisa / watched Cabeza de Vaca wash up on their beaches, / shipwrecked, & call it his. Now there’s a Michoacana / on the corner” (87). Such a preoccupation with Indigeneity is not exclusive to Brown’s writing; Jane Alberdeston Coralin’s “Taína Dreams” and Modesto Flako Jiménez’s “The Curse of the Goat” also make insightful cross-cultural intersections.

Other themes abound as poets vacillate between sentiments of belonging and solitude. John Murillo’s “Practicing Fade-aways” tells of a group of young basketball players separated over time and distance, leaving one poetic voice to play on an empty playground by himself. E. Ethelbert Miller struggles with understanding her American identity in “Spanish Conversation” while Marianela Medrano reproaches the treatment of Haitians in her birthplace in “El Corte.” At the same time, Josefina Báez seeks a larger Pan American identity centered on cultural fusion in “Nosotros No Somos Como Ustedes.” Other poets focus on health, family, love, language, and location. In short, the plurality of experiences highlights Castillo-Garsow’s own theorization of a triple consciousness: “the three-ness” felt by “a Latin@, a Negro, an American; three souls, three thoughts, three unreconciled strivings; three warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder...