Voices From the Black Diaspora in Spain: On Transcultural Spaces and Afrospanish Identity Constructions in Poetry

Abstract

My essay will examine poems by different Afro-Spanish authors such as Francisco Zamora Loboch, Justo Bolekia Boleká (both Equatorial Guinea), Agnès Agboton (Benin), Abdoulaye Bilal Traoré (Senegal), Michel Feugain (Cameroon) among others. These writers from different cultural backgrounds share the experience of migrating to the Iberian peninsula and having adopted Spanish as the language of their literary production. Their writings deal with questions of belonging and otherness in Spanish society and revolve around the condition of the Afro-Spanish subject. With a close reading of selected poems I will discuss in what way these authors explore both the Afro-Spanish subject’s exposure to marginalization and Othering and their feelings of (non-)belonging. Furthermore, I will examine to what extent they juxtapose selfarticulations of Afro-Spanish identity opening up liminal spaces that unsettle binaries, give rise to continuous transcultural movements and allow for moments of cultural difference (H. K. Bhabha). The aim of this essay is to identify Afro-Spanish identity constructions in these poems as a complex and continuous process of re/positioning (S. Hall) that cannot be narrowed down to an idealistic vision of transcultural existence dissolving any kind of polarities but that is consistently troubled by glimpses of alienation and uprootedness.