The Many Lives of Raúl Grigera and the Power of Racial Storytelling in Argentina (Afro-Latin America
Genre: Historical
Cambridge University Press
February 1, 2022
On Sale: January 6, 2022
Featuring: Raúl Grigera
410 pages
ISBN: 110884555X
EAN: 9781108845557
Kindle: B09M8XMF5G
Hardcover / e-Book
Book Summary
Celebrities live their lives in constant dialogue with stories about them. But when these stories are shaped by durable racist myths, they wield undue power to ruin lives and obliterate communities. Black Legend is the haunting story of an Afro-Argentine, Raúl Grigera ('el negro Raúl'), who in the early 1900s audaciously fashioned himself into an alluring Black icon of Buenos Aires' bohemian nightlife, only to have defamatory storytellers unmake him. In this gripping history, Paulina Alberto exposes the destructive power of racial storytelling and narrates a new history of Black Argentina and Argentine Blackness across two centuries. With the extraordinary Raúl Grigera at its center, Black Legend opens new windows into lived experiences of Blackness in a 'white' nation, and illuminates how Raúl's experience of celebrity was not far removed from more ordinary experiences of racial stories in the flesh.