PALARA #23, Fall 2019

Dear PALARA:Please find enclosed the fall 2019 double issue of PALARA. Dr. Dorothy Mosby and I would like to extend gratitude to our guest editor, Dr. Vanessa Valdes, for bringing a timely, but still understudied topic in Afro-Latin American Research, Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx Cinema. As Dorothy and I noted in the introduction, "The special issue of PALARA centers research on contemporary film in the Afro-Latin American Diaspora and explores black subjectivities from a cinematographic lens. The authors present film of the present and engage with past themes illustrating in some cases the advancement of the cinematic portrayal of blacks in Latin America/Hispanic Caribbean. In other instances, it conveys that more needs to be done. Most importantly, the authors shed light on films not typically analyzed and bring awareness and attention to new works in Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba."Further, "[t]he second issue of this volume comprises analyses of works primarily from the Southern Cone. Valérie Benoist's "Sister Ursula de Jesús' Equal Economy of Salvation" expands knowledge and narratives of seventeenth century nuns in Colonial Latin America through the analysis of the vidas (spiritual autobiogra-phies) of the little known black Peruvian nun, Sister Ursula de Jesús. Benoist argues that Sister Ursula's vida "differs from more conventional ones by defining her blackness as an essential ingredient in the construction of her trope of suffering." Alain Lawo-Sukam's "African Immigrants in Argentina Post- Slavery: An Old-New Odyssey" analyzes African immigration in Argentina by expanding it to include not only Sub-Saharan African immigration but also North African immigrants as well as those from South Africa. Lawo-Sukan's analysis is comprehensive and spans centuries of African immigration to a nation that has historically denied the presence of Afro-descendants."You will also find enclosed book reviews of Dr. Luisa Marcela Ossa and Dr. Debbie Lee-DiStefano's critical edition, Afro-Asian Connections in Latin America and the Caribbean and Dr. Paulette A Ramsay's Star Apple Blue and Avocado Green. Please find the journal here, https://palara.journal.library.uta.edu/index.php/palara/index. You are welcome to send this to anyone in your network. I also hope to see you at ALARA 2020 in Puerto Rico! Best,Dorothy Mosby and Sonja Watson