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.
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.
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.
I'm a historian of gender in colonial Latin America. I'm always looking for surprises in these stories: men's and women's lives in the past were not narrower than ours, and I love to find their strategies for dealing with a system that was often stacked against them. I enjoy learning that my expectations were wrong, and thinking about the past as a living world. As a researcher who is always stumbling on unusual documents that I have to confront with fresh eyes, I really love a book that challenges me to think about how we can even know about the past, especially in terms of race and gender.
Truly one of the most exhilarating and surprising books I have read in a long time!
Abercrombie found a cache of documents left from the trial of Antonio Yta, born María Yta, who lived as a man after being tossed out of five different Spanish convents in the late eighteenth century. Yta ended up in South America, where he became a petty bureaucrat and married a Spanish woman who eventually turned him in to authorities. Along the way, Yta received permission from the Vatican to live and dress as a man. The story is not only full of ups and downs, but Abercrombie has transcribed a lot of the documentary record to show readers how Yta's family, friends, and colleagues struggled with who he was.
The book is divided into parts that tell the story, engage with different academic literature, and imagine Yta's life so that a reader can tailor…
In 1803 in the colonial South American city of La Plata, Dona Martina Vilvado y Balverde presented herself to church and crown officials to denounce her husband of more than four years, Don Antonio Yta, as a "woman in disguise." Forced to submit to a medical inspection that revealed a woman's body, Don Antonio confessed to having been Maria Yta, but continued to assert his maleness and claimed to have a functional "member" that appeared, he said, when necessary.
Passing to America is at once a historical biography and an in-depth examination of the sex/gender complex in an era before…
I am the author of ten collections of microfiction and poetry. I came to microfiction after having written several novels and short story collections. I just felt that I was saying more than I wanted to say. Microfiction has allowed me to completely distill my stories to the essence of what makes them tick. Of the 26 books I have written, the microfiction collections are my favorites because every word and idea is carefully measured. I am presently working on my next collection of microfiction and have no immediate plans to return to writing at longer lengths. Oddly, writing small has freed me up so I can experiment with various genres, structures, and ideas. I honestly feel microfiction has made me a much better writer.
It was hard to settle on a single book by Shua, who is widely considered the “Queen of South American Microfiction,” because her work is just so good. Without a Net is one of her two microfiction collections translated into English. This one deals with characters from circuses and carnivals and is an astonishing collection of microfiction. Each carefully chosen word resonates and illustrates the power of the form. This is a book I would want to have with me if I could only take one book with me on a weeks-long trip.
Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Steven J. Stewart. "Ana María Shua's microfictions reveal oneiric universes, multiform realties, secret worlds with the unlikely coherence of the absurd, the amorphous logic of the imagination. They are characterized by the most unique form of concise language and the omnipresence of humor."—Raúl Brasca
I have been studying and writing about, anarchism, gender, and the Spanish Civil War for almost 4 decades. I first explored what it would mean to organize a society without formal institutions of authority; and, as part of that research, I looked at how anarcho-syndicalist organizations related to governmental institutions and the struggle against fascism in Spain. I then engaged in a multi-year investigation of the social revolution that occurred in the midst of the ensuing Civil War and, in particular, the activities of the anarchist women’s organization, Mujeres Libres. Through the research for my book, Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women, I was captivated by the extraordinary strength and enthusiasm of those women, and committed myself to telling their stories in ways that would be relevant to contemporary readers.
Based on interviews Fraser conducted with both activists and everyday citizens (over 300 people, in total) who survived the Civil War, this book provides a powerful picture of the struggles, successes and defeats experienced by those who lived through it. It provides an extraordinary view of the complexity of the war and of the organizations that became involved in it.
Conversations taped between June 1973 and May 1975 with more than three hundred survivors of the Spanish Civil War provide a chronological account of the fratricidal struggle, which brought violence and desperation to every family in Spain
Joan Fallon is a Scottish novelist who has lived in the province of Málaga, in southern Spain, for almost thirty years. She has a great passion for all aspects of Spanish history and culture. While writing a book about the lives of Spanish women after the Civil War, she learned about the unbelievable massacre of thousands of innocent people as they left their homes and fled to Almería in 1937. Women, children and old men were gunned down by cruising gunboats. A historian, teacher and now an author, Joan wanted to know why nobody ever spoke about this tragedy.
Gamel Woolsey was the wife of Gerald Brenan, who has written many books about Spain. They were living in Málaga when the Civil War broke out. This is a book of her experiences and the people she met then.
Gamel Woolsey instinctively understood that a civil war, with all its irrationality of blood killing blood, could not be told by a journalistic recitiation. Yet through her vivid character sketches and her powerful eyewitness account, a reader comes away from Gamel Woolsey's memoir with the feeling of having attained a grasp of the Spanish war--as great, perhaps, as if one had plowed through some multi-tomed work heavy with statistics. Her descriptions of Spanish life are timeless, and therefore remain as fresh and compelling as when written.
I am an award-winning author and illustrator who works in a variety of genres, including Historical Fiction. When historical fiction is well done it conveys times and events as they were lived and breathed by real people. Historical fiction by diverse women tells the stories of those consistently left out of the “historical record.” Human life is rich and diverse, and the stories belong to all of us, not just those who have historically had the power to control the cultural narratives. As a writer and student of history, it has been my pleasure to explore characters that are not often represented, characters that are ordinary for their times, and extraordinary as well.
The Time of the Doves is one of my favorite books of all time for its intimacy, immediacy, and unusual descriptive power. Natalia, a young woman living in Barcelona around the time of the Spanish Civil war, paints for the reader a vivid and seamless picture of her life from the inside out—her loves and losses, survival, the confusion of a world broken by chaos and violence and put back together again by perseverance and tenderness. A short but unforgettable read that I return to again and again.
The Time of the Doves - by Mercè Rodoreda - is the powerfully written story of a naïve shop-tender during the Spanish Civil War and beyond, is a rare and moving portrait of a simple soul confronting and surviving a convulsive period in history. The book has been widely translated, and was made into a film.
I'm a historian of gender in colonial Latin America. I'm always looking for surprises in these stories: men's and women's lives in the past were not narrower than ours, and I love to find their strategies for dealing with a system that was often stacked against them. I enjoy learning that my expectations were wrong, and thinking about the past as a living world. As a researcher who is always stumbling on unusual documents that I have to confront with fresh eyes, I really love a book that challenges me to think about how we can even know about the past, especially in terms of race and gender.
This book introduced me to the concept of a "private pregnancy." Imagine that you are a wealthy young woman in the colonial Spanish empire. Your beloved asks to marry you, and you agree; based on that agreement, you begin to have sexual relations. You become pregnant. In many cases, this would not matter: marriage would eventually legitimate that child.
But what if he leaves or dies? You and your family have to create a fiction that you are not pregnant, place your child elsewhere, and hope you live an honorable enough life that the child can someday also benefit from your reputation. This is the kernel of Twinam's story of how Latin American elites manufactured notions of honor within their society and how Spanish monarchs ended up publishing a price list for legitimating illegitimate births after the fact. It really revealed the mindset behind elite society, not only colonial but…
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.
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.
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…
Ever since traveling across Cuba as a teenager in 2006, I’ve been fascinated by the Caribbean and Latin America. That trip inspired me to learn Spanish, study abroad in Mexico, and write a college honors thesis at Harvard about the Batista and Trujillo regimes in Cuba and the Dominican Republic respectively. Upon graduation, I merged this interest with my desire to serve my country by joining the Coast Guard – the military branch most involved in the Western Hemisphere. This proved to be a wise decision, as the two years I spent stationed in Puerto Rico and patrolling the Caribbean were two of the most enjoyable years of my life.
Esmeralda Santiago portrays the 19th-century journey of Ana Cubillas from imperial Spain to colonial outpost Puerto Rico. Cubillas has a complicated relationship with her family, slavery, and Puerto Rico, and the reader never knows quite what to think of her. Like Cubillas, Puerto Rico itself is complicated. I lived in San Juan for two years and grew to love the island, but I never felt like I quite understood it – any outsider who says they do is probably lying.
As a young girl growing up in Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas is powerfully drawn to Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de Leon. And in handsome twin brothers Ramon and Inocente—both in love with Ana—she finds a way to get there. Marrying Ramon at the age of eighteen, she travels across the ocean to Hacienda los Gemelos, a remote sugar plantation the brothers have inherited. But soon the Civil War erupts in the United States, and Ana finds her livelihood, and perhaps even her life, threatened by the very people on whose backs…
I am a Professor of History at Texas A&M University and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. I teach and research broadly in the histories of Britain and its empire, North America, and the Atlantic world. I am the author of four books, including Making Headlines: The American Revolution as Seen through the British Press and The Weight of Vengeance: The United States, the British Empire, and the War of 1812. I am especially fascinated with how imperialism shape colonizers’ cultures.
Focusing on the Spanish Empire, this book explores two of the most imported goods from the Americas. Norton carefully examines the deep cultural significance of Tobacco and Chocolate amongst the indigenous peoples of the Americas and how the goods were adopted and adapted in Europe, ultimately highlighting the profound impact imperialism had on European cultures.
Before Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492, no European had ever seen, much less tasted, tobacco or chocolate. Initially dismissed as dry leaves and an odd Indian drink, these two commodities came to conquer Europe on a scale unsurpassed by any other American resource or product. A fascinating story of contact, exploration, and exchange in the Atlantic world, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures traces the ways in which these two goods of the Americas both changed and were changed by Europe.
Focusing on the Spanish Empire, Marcy Norton investigates how tobacco and chocolate became material and symbolic links to the pre-Hispanic past…
