Response to Joshua R. Deckman's "Feminist Spiritualities"

In the third chapter of Joshua R. Deckman’s book Feminist Spiritualities, poets and artists, such as Nitty Scott, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Maria Theresa Fernandez, do not merely create art. They create space for Afro-Latinx women to see themselves more clearly. Through Afro-Caribbean ancestral traditions and deep spiritual memory, these women offer tools for resistance and healing in a world that often tries to fragment and erase their multi-cultural identities. While legacies of colonialism, racism, and patriarchy are inherited, the beauty within Latinidad, Blackness, and Womanhood is reclaimed with the intersection of power.

            The poem “Afro-Latina” by Elizabeth Acevedo, resonates with me. As her verses swapped between Spanish and English, I felt I did not need to fully understand their meaning to have a sense of the feeling behind them. “Remind me that I come from the Tainos of the Rio/ The Aztec, the Maya, los Inca/…And the Yoruba Africano que con sus manos built a mundo nunca imaginado,” has a beat and pattern that shows a tradition of ceremony and music (Deckman 100). That type of recognition of culture, particularly for Afro-Latinx women growing up in-between multiple cultures, is necessary and rare. As Deckman wrote, “Acevedo uses pain and discomfort as a means of underscoring the difficult readability of her black Dominican body in the US” (Deckman 100). She reminds Afro-Latinx women that they aren’t fragmented. They are whole, with roots that run deep.

            Like Acevedo, Maria Teresa Fernandez writes about her body and the ways she tried to betray her multicultural looks by attempting to change them. In “Poem for My Grifa Rican Sistah,” Fernandez takes the intimacy of hair and turns it into testimony. The rituals of straightening your hair, moisturizing it, burning it until it breaks off, and the shame associated with that speaks to the way so many of us have learned to see ourselves through someone else’s eye. Though I am not an Afro-Latina, as a preteen and early teenager, I tried my best to straighten my unruly curls with a 1980’s curling iron, half rusted from neglect. I remember the pain of burning my neck and the associated scar it created, all due to wanting to look like the straight-haired girls in my class.  In naming her pain, Fernandez gives purpose to a shared story. A story that affirms women, and particularly Afro-Latinx women, are not alone in their struggle to love themselves as they are.

            With her music, Nitty Scott honors Afro-diasporic spirituality, by uplifting black womanhood with a fierce, joyful energy. Her work draws on Yoruba traditions, and imagery from Santeria. These are not aesthetic references, but rather living, spiritual practices that honor Black ancestry, feminine, and divine powers. In doing this, she assures Afro-Latinx women as powerful and scared beings, even in the face of historical erasure. Her song “La Diaspora,” and performances invoking “la negritude,” show pride and connection to ancestral knowledge. She invokes, conjures, and lives her identity. Scott’s celebration of self, spirit, and ritual reminds us that being an Afro-Latinx woman is not just about survival.  It is about sacred joy and lineage. Her music becomes a cultural and spiritual bridge where Afro-Latinx women can see their power affirmed, loved, and reflected into the world.