THE CALL
The Acentos Review will provide a needed space for creative work by Afro-Latinx writers, artists, and creatives across disciplines. We welcome work of protest, future dreaming, speculative practice, resistance, resilient joy, testimonios, etc. in response to these times. This is a special issue with the deadline of June 15, 2020 with publication on June 19th (Juneteenth), a day which celebrates black liberation. This issue invites the fullness of our human experiences and complexities; grief, rage, revolutionary and resistant joy, etc. are all welcome sentiments with the issue. This special issue privileges creative practitioners who identify as Afro-Latinx. Please include a statement on what being Afro-Latinx means to you (or however else you otherwise identify as afrodescendiente).
Previously published pieces are welcome, though you must note in your cover letter where it has been published, when, and note that you have the rights for it to be published or permission from the original publisher. Translations are also welcome with permission from the original author provided (or their estate) that you are an authorized translator. Video or music compositions should be provided as Mp4 or Mp3 files and include only original content.
CONTEXT
On May 23rd, my daughter, Aurélia, was born.
By May 25th, George Floyd, a brother, a son, and father was murdered in Minneapolis by the police. Since then, there has been a rising and global movement in solidarity in the struggle for black liberation; it calls for an end for racial violence and dismantling of white supremacy. Activists call attention to the historical (and current) looting of Black communities and the traumatic and disproportionate deaths in Black communities through police violence and now disease like Covid-19. There is a swell of urgency for transformative change in this time of upheaval. I look at my nursing daughter while my son leans against me. He is not yet two years old, and I think of Mr. Floyd, how he called for his mother at his end; I think of his mother's devastation at his loss, a loss that attempted to strip him of his humanity. His death and that of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and so many others whose names we know and many more we don't are a consequence of the racist and prejudiced systems we live within, which perpetuate white supremacy. Our beloved Latinx communities are also fraught with anti-black toxicity and erasure. This cannot flourish and The Acentos Review is poised to be one space of counternarrative and action. Here we are in this time of resistance. I think often of how Gloria Anzaldúa reminds us in Borderlands that we have entered into the years of the sixth Mayan sun, a time of consciousness raising, painful though it may be, and transformation. While nursing my infant daughter, horns honk as a protest parade rolls down the nearby avenue and helicopters circle above. She is now 12 days old as I write this and the wheels of change begin to change through defunding of police departments, global protests and actions, and more. More must come. Siempre pa'lante, gente. We invite you to tell your (our stories).
This special issue privileges creative practitioners who identify as Afro-Latinx. Raina J. León, PhD (founding editor) with Lupe Méndez (associate editor)