"Sisters in Race": Afrocubana Writers and the Journalistic Ecosystem of Minerva (1888-89)

• In Event: Ecological perspective through women writers

Description for Program

This presentation will introduce a rich, little-known source of writing by nineteenth-century Afro-Cuban women, placing it within a broader journalistic ecosystem of its time. Minerva: Revista Quincenal Dedicada a la Mujer de Color (Minerva: Biweekly Magazine Dedicated to the Woman of Color) provides direct access to an intellectual network from a severely underrepresented demographic that has been difficult to locate in the historical record. The magazine's first epoch was published in Havana just two years after the abolition of slavery on the island and about a decade prior to independence from Spain. A careful reading shows that its authors were interested in discourses typical for other women's magazines of the period, but they significantly reformulated these for their specific audience. Many of its women writers and editors wrote to each other as "hermanas de raza" (sisters in race) and discussed challenges particular to both Afro-Cubans and to women, building a praxis of intersectional feminism. The magazine allows us to track the consolidation of a group memory of enslavement as shared trauma, and the collective process of giving meaning to freedom for Cuban women of color. Minerva offers unique access to this intellectual community's interventions into print culture and public debate.

Author

• Sarah Moody, The University of Alabama