Why am I passionate about this?

History tells us who we are and what we can become. History in the Andes tells us that people of the African Diaspora have been a part of building that part of the world into what it is today for over 500 years. I have been fascinated by learning this history and inspired by leaders, writers, artists, and fellow historians who consider themselves Afro-Andean and are building the future. For 25 years now, I have been scouring historical archives in Peru, Spain, and the US to find more sources to help us recognize and understand that history as we use it to build a better, more just present and future. 


I wrote

Afro-Latino Voices: Translations of Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic Narratives

By Leo J. Garofalo, Kathryn Joy McKnight,

Book cover of Afro-Latino Voices: Translations of Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic Narratives

What is my book about?

Ideally suited for use in broad, swift-moving surveys of Latin American and Caribbean history, this abridgment of McKnight and Garofalo's…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Mastering the Law: Slavery and Freedom in the Legal Ecology of the Spanish Empire

Leo J. Garofalo Why did I love this book?

Colombia links the Andes to the Caribbean, and Ricardo Raúl Salazar Rey’s book shows how central the story of the African Diaspora is to how the Spanish Empire was built and governed for so long (much, much longer than the US has existed or the British were able to govern in the Americas). And this book shows how in the 1600s, Black people were building enduring places for themselves in that Spanish Empire that initially only viewed them as enslaved laborers, but was forced by their legal actions and alliances to recognize them as much more and much more diverse. Colombia has just elected its first Black vice president; and this wonderful book tells us how black people made themselves part of the foundation of that Andean nation.

By Ricardo Raúl Salazar Rey,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mastering the Law as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Explores the legal relationships of enslaved people and their descendants during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spanish America.

Atlantic slavery can be overwhelming in its immensity and brutality, as it involved more than 15 million souls forcibly displaced by European imperialism and consumed in building the global economy. Mastering the Law: Slavery and Freedom in the Legal Ecology of the Spanish Empire lays out the deep history of Iberian slavery, explores its role in the Spanish Indies, and shows how Africans and their descendants used and shaped the legal system as they established their place in Iberoamerican society during…


Book cover of Entangled Coercion: African and Indigenous Labour in Charcas (16th–17th Century)

Leo J. Garofalo Why did I love this book?

Did you know that African and indigenous people worked together in what is today Bolivia and Argentina? They were both enslaved and those who had bought their freedom. Bolivia, high in the mountains, might seem remote, but in the 1500s and 1600s its rich silver mines were the motor of the Spanish Empire’s economy. And Spain was the superpower that dominated Europe, America, and the Atlantic.

Bolivia and the zones that supplied it with coerced and free workers, mules, food, wine, textiles, and the stimulant coca leaf was called Charcas, and it was the most valuable and important part of all of the Americas at the time.

This wonderfully detailed book by an outstanding Bolivian historian tells the story of the Black and indigenous laborers who made this possible.

By Paola A. Revilla Orías,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Entangled Coercion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book investigates the phenomenon of slavery and other forms of servitude experienced by people of African or indigenous origin who were taken captive and then subjected to forced labor in Charcas (Bolivia) in the 16th and 17th centuries.


Book cover of Exquisite Slaves: Race, Clothing, and Status in Colonial Lima

Leo J. Garofalo Why did I love this book?

We might think that enslaved people in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Peru had no chance to express themselves or assert their dignity as women and men. But we would be wrong! Afro-Peruvian men and women successfully subverted many of the laws and practices designed to subordinate and dehumanize them through dress and self-expression. This is an exciting and historically innovative look at that fascinating world in which the most downtrodden in society found ingenious ways to show who they really were.

By Tamara J. Walker,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Exquisite Slaves as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Exquisite Slaves, Tamara J. Walker examines how slaves used elegant clothing as a language for expressing attitudes about gender and status in the wealthy urban center of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Lima, Peru. Drawing on traditional historical research methods, visual studies, feminist theory, and material culture scholarship, Walker argues that clothing was an emblem of not only the reach but also the limits of slaveholders' power and racial domination. Even as it acknowledges the significant limits imposed on slaves' access to elegant clothing, Exquisite Slaves also showcases the insistence and ingenuity with which slaves dressed to convey their own sense…


Book cover of In the Blood of Our Brothers: Abolitionism and the End of the Slave Trade in Spain's Atlantic Empire, 1800–1870

Leo J. Garofalo Why did I love this book?

The first reason to read this book is that the fight against slavery in the Americas is not just a US story about its famous abolitionists and Civil War. The bigger story about abolition and the forces that opposed it involves European powers like Spain that controlled more territory in the Americas and governed the lives of many millions more people than lived in the US and what became the US.

The second reason to read this book is that nineteenth-century Spain was divided between liberal forces that wanted to end enslavement and conservative forces that wanted to preserve “property rights” at all costs; and this led to dueling abolitionist and antiabolitionist discourses. We can learn from this history as today, our own country is increasingly divided between dueling discourses.

By Jesús Sanjurjo,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked In the Blood of Our Brothers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Details the abolition of the slave trade in the Atlantic World to the 1860s.

Throughout the nineteenth century, very few people in Spain campaigned to stop the slave trade and did even less to abolish slavery. Even when some supported abolition, the reasons that moved them were not always humanitarian, liberal, or egalitarian. How abolitionist ideas were received, shaped, and transformed during this period has been ripe for study. Jesus Sanjurjo's In the Blood of Our Brothers: Abolitionism and the End of the Slave Trade in Spain's Atlantic Empire, 1800-1870 provides a comprehensive theory of the history, the politics, and…


Book cover of The Fabric of Resistance: Textile Workshops and the Rise of Rebellious Landscapes in Colonial Peru

Leo J. Garofalo Why did I love this book?

For thousands of years, right down to the present, textiles and weaving in the Andes has been some of the most exquisite and sophisticated in the world. It has been linked to the amazing cultural creativity of people in the Andes and the rise and fall of successive empires because controlling textile production is controlling power and wealth.

This book shows us something entirely new: how the weavers who made these amazing textiles experienced and often resisted that power and the exploitation of their labor. Even though this book is not explicitly about Afro-Andean people, they were an integral part of the Andean labor force, and they figure in histories of resistance and rebellion in the Andes.

By Di Hu,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Fabric of Resistance as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Fabric of Resistance: Textile Workshops and the Rise of Rebellious Landscapes in Colonial Peru documents the impact of Spanish colonial institutions of labor on identity and social cohesion in Peru. Through archaeological and historical lines of evidence, Di Hu examines the long-term social conditions that enabled the large-scale rebellions in the late Spanish colonial period in Peru. Hu argues that ordinary people from different backgrounds pushed back against the top-down identity categories imposed by the Spanish colonial government and in the process created a cosmopolitan social landscape that later facilitated broader rebellion.

Hu's case study is Pomacocha, the site…


Explore my book 😀

Afro-Latino Voices: Translations of Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic Narratives

By Leo J. Garofalo, Kathryn Joy McKnight,

Book cover of Afro-Latino Voices: Translations of Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic Narratives

What is my book about?

Ideally suited for use in broad, swift-moving surveys of Latin American and Caribbean history, this abridgment of McKnight and Garofalo's Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550-1812 (published in 2009) includes all of the English translations, introductions, and annotation created for that volume.

Book cover of Mastering the Law: Slavery and Freedom in the Legal Ecology of the Spanish Empire
Book cover of Entangled Coercion: African and Indigenous Labour in Charcas (16th–17th Century)
Book cover of Exquisite Slaves: Race, Clothing, and Status in Colonial Lima

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No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

Book cover of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

Rona Simmons Author Of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”

Rona's book list on World War II featuring the average Joe

What is my book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.

The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.

No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…

No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

What is this book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Latin America, clothing, and slaves?

Latin America 121 books
Clothing 38 books
Slaves 106 books