Morenophilia/Morenophobia

Abstract Chapter 3 examines the relationship between the post-soul condition and When the Spirits Dance Mambo: Growing Up Nuyorican in El Barrio (2004) by Dr. Marta Moreno Vega. Although WSDM is set in the 1950s, the context of its composition and publication are mediated by the Afrocentric and multiracial discourses of the post-soul era. As an Afrocentric Puerto Rican scholar and memoirist, Vega complicates debates about Black cynicism and authenticity in Nelson George’s Post-Soul Nation and Debra Dickerson’s The End of Blackness, two post-soul treatises that were published in the same year as WSDM. In this chapter, I examine the philias and phobias of Afro-Latino and African American interculturalism in WSDM to enrich and invite conversations about Afro-Latinidad’s relationship to the post-soul condition. Vega makes a diasporic connection between Afro-Latinos and African Americans by fusing Katherine Dunham, the famous African American choreographer, with La Dominadora, a spirit guide in the Afro-Caribbean religion known as Santerismo. The figurative fusion of Dunham and La Dominadora reifies Vega’s theory of the Black Global Aesthetic (BGA). Vega’s fusion is informed by her doctoral research on the history of Latin jazz and Santería in post-war New York, a history in which Dunham played a major role.