Challenging the Black Atlantic

The New World Novels of Zapata Olivella and Gonçalves

John T. Maddox IV

2020
350 pages
$47.95
ISBN 9781684481866

The historical novels of Manuel Zapata Olivella and Ana Maria Gonçalves map black journeys from Africa to the Americas in a way that challenges the Black Atlantic paradigm that has become synonymous with cosmopolitan African diaspora studies. Unlike Paul Gilroy, who coined the term and based it on W.E.B. DuBois's double consciousness, Zapata, in Changó el gran putas (1983), creates an empowering mythology that reframes black resistance in Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States. In Um defeito de cor (2006), Gonçalves imagines the survival strategies of a legendary woman said to be the mother of black abolitionist poet Luís Gama and a conspirator in an African Muslim-led revolt in Brazil's "Black Rome." These novels show differing visions of revolution, black community, femininity, sexuality, and captivity. They skillfully reveal how events preceding the UNESCO Decade of Afro-Descent (2015-2024) alter our understanding of Afro-Latin America as it gains increased visibility.

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Reviews

"Maddox succeeds in adding to the Black Atlantic paradigm, taking it in a decidedly Latin-American direction. At the center of his theoretical intervention, he compellingly offers Zapata's version of the Nuevo Munto as a foundational construct - a search for a profoundly historical and spiritual recognition of African identity, and a vision of a just world for the present and future."
- Religion and the Arts, December 2021

"An innovative and ground-breaking attempt to examine the nuances of the Black Atlantic Theory via diaspora...highly recommended for a variety of audiences."
- Hispania, September 2021

"In Challenging the Black Atlantic Maddox offers us a refreshingly provocative revision of Black Atlantic theory and African diasporic authorship across Luso-Hispanic communities. His insightful readings will further enrich our understanding of the complex and non-linear facets of African diasporic Blackness, Black Atlantic religious traditions, and Black women in impactful, new ways."
- Nick Jones, author of Staging Habla de Negros

"John Maddox's Challenging the Black Atlantic is as monumental as the historical sagas the book studies. Masterpieces of Afro-Latin American literature, Zapata Olivella's Changó El Gran Putas and Gonçalves's Um defeito de cor deserved such a comprehensive reading: originally conceived, meticulously researched, and well written and argued, the book is an intellectually sophisticated interdisciplinary study that will certainly leave its vital mark in the field of Afro-Diaspora studies for years to come. A must read!"
- Emanuelle Oliveira-Monte, author of Writing Identity: The Politics of Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literature

About the author:

John T. Maddox IV is an assistant professor of Spanish and African American studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He translated Puerto Rican playwright Alejandro Tapia y Rivera's La Cuarterona as Juliet of the Tropics (2016). He guest edited a special issue of the Afro-Hispanic Review on maroons with Graciela Maglia in 2017. His essays have appeared in Callaloo, Hispania, and Latin American Research Review.

Distributed by Rutgers University Press

Cloth: $150.00, 9781684481873; EPUB: $47.95, 9781684481880