Coda

Summary

The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature is based on the premise that textual memorials in the works of some of the most widely read authors of Latin American descent in the last fifty years are akin to those constituting UNESCO’s Slave Route insofar as they memorialize a Latin-African literature neglected in World Literature. The texts I consulted here defiantly stretch the limits of Caribbean, Latinx, or Chicano literary memory, geographically setting the plot in an Atlantic-affected Latin America or a West Africa transplanted to the US Southwest. What emerges in these stories is not only an undeniable rupture from an occidentalist view of “transatlantic” studies, but also a break from the tutelary bounds confining authors to their regional space. In World Literature, Díaz and Obejas are often marketed as representatives of Dominicanidad or Cubanidad, respectively, overlooking the innovative ways both representative Latinx authors update African memory.