Rethinking Afro-Latinidad Through Literature

This event will provide a forum for a dynamic and intersectional conversation that transcends borders—geographic and imaginary—between the U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Through writing and literature, we will explore the ample and ever-changing landscape of Afro-Latinidad.

Speakers: 

Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Assistant Professor and Resident Writer at EDP University

Jumko Ogata Aguilar, Writer and Translator

Moderated by Aitor Bouso Gavín, Lecturer in Latinx Studies, Harvard University

About the Speakers

Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro (pronouns elle/ella/afrodiva/they/she) is an Assistant Professor and Resident Writer at EDP University. For their book, Afroalgoritmos, Arroyo Pizarro received the 2024 PEN International Narrative Award. She has been awarded the 2022 Boricuas Letters Fellowship by the Mellon Foundation and became a Poetry Performer at the Whitney Museum of New York in December 2022. They were also awarded the 2023 Residency Fellowship by Words Without Borders. She has been recognized nationally and internationally as one of the most committed Afro-Caribbean authors in the struggle for anti-racist education and to build a more just and equitable society.

Arroyo Pizarro publishes books that denounce, make visible, and promote the discussion of African identity and sex-diversity in Puerto Rican culture. She is the founder and director of the Chair of Ancestral Black Women, a conference that responds to the UN call to celebrate the International Decade for Afro-descendants since 2015. Their work includes the short story book Las negras (2012), winner of the PEN Club National Tale Award in 2013, their book Animales de apariencia inofensiva, Libro del año 2015, and their book Ojos de luna, named Book of the year 2007. Combative, nonconformist and creative, Yolanda goes beyond the simple concepts that objectify Black women. Her book Afrofeministamente won the PEN International’s highest award for a poetry collection in 2021.

She leads the educational campaigns: #PeloBueno, #SalasdeLecturaAntirracista, and #EnnegreceTuProntuario. In 2022, she became the first Boricua author to publish for Plaza Sésamo, project ¡Listos a jugar! Storybook. Their work has been translated into German, French, Italian, English, Portuguese, Hungarian and Kreyol. In 2025, her poetry collection Afrofeministamente will be published in Portuguese in Brazil.

Jumko Ogata Aguilar is an anti-racism writer, translator, and advocate from Veracruz. She has a degree in Latin American Studies from UNAM. She was part of the anthology "Cabezas en la Ventana. Latin American terror anthology" (2024), Tsunami 2 (2020), as well as "Daughters of Latin America" (2023). She is the author of "Mi pelo chino" (2022) a bilingual children’s book dedicated to celebrating curly hair. She is the translator of "Hermanas del ñame. Black women and our recovery" by bell hooks (2024). She has given workshops on anti-racism for Meta, Google, the Ministry of Culture, and non-profit organizations in Mexico and the United States.

About the Moderator

Aitor Bouso-Gavín (he/him/él) joined EMR as a lecturer of Latinx Studies in Fall 2024, where he is also the faculty director for the Latinx Studies Working Group. Aitor is an interdisciplinary scholar with a primary focus on Latinx literature, culture, and visual arts. Aside from Latinx literature and visual arts, Aitor’s research and teaching interests are Black studies, decolonial trauma theory, feminist and queer of color critique, and medical humanities. His primary research draws on works by prominent Latinx authors and visual artists to examine the creative expression of internalized harm and trauma as a catalyst for personal, political, and social healing and relationality.

This event will have Spanish interpretation via Zoom. Este evento tendrá interpretación simultánea por Zoom. 

This is a collaboration between the DRCLAS Mexico Office, DRCLAS Central America and Caribbean Program, and the DRCLAS Latinidad and Global Diasporas Initiative.