Black Dominicanas Online: The Journey of Becoming, Being and Building

• In Event: The Personal as Political, and Pedagogical: Currere as Foundational Research Praxis

Abstract

Propelled by their own experiences learning from radical transnational feminists in the beginning of their graduate career, the first author encountered Borders of Dominicanidad by Lorgia García-Peña, which caused a personal and academic intellectual shift– as it centered the silenced histories of Black Dominicans, more importantly, San Juan de La Maguana, a historical region during U.S. occupation in the 20th century. This book led to a documented reflection of a memorable exchange, “I sat down with my mom to cross reference what was mentioned [in] San Juan de la Maguana (where she is from). And after a long conversation on the book Blackness and feminism with my mother—she asked me, ‘so, is your dissertation on Black Dominican women and feminism? Because I want to read it. I wish I could have done this if I had had the opportunity to attend college” (Author, 2019). Since this experience, the author found themselves redirecting their research pursuits from institutional assessments and critiques to centering Black Dominican women and their online communal and pedagogical practices. Their personal histories drove their intellectual curiosity.

The author’s research continued this line of inquiry with the rise of Black Dominican women on social media during 2020 using their platforms to have raw-discussions of anti-Blackness, women’s rights, nation-state violence in the Dominican Republic and the United States, anti-Haitianism, and navigating diasporic lives as Black women. Their research focuses on Black Dominican women’s use of social media to shape community, education, and nuanced identity across the diaspora. Their research carefully weaves in the threads of scholarship from the fields of communications, digital humanities, and Dominican studies with a Black Feminist lens, indicating how digital platforms and conglomerates have strategically marginalized and mis/disinform the public on matters pertaining to sociopolitical issues. Yet, other scholarship presented by Black feminist and intersectional scholars point out how individuals in the Black community have utilized these social media platforms as a site to contest the misrepresentations of their communities. It is through the author’s currere of themselves and other Black Dominican women, we begin to untether how mundane social media interactions explicate the systemic issues and self-discovery.

Author

• Rosa Angela Calosso, Graduate Center - CUNY