Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Ecuador Is Black: Afro-Ecuadorian Literary Resistance In Drums Under My Skin, Gabriella Davis

Student Scholars Day Oral Presentations

The transcendence of Black Ecuadorian literature has the power to rewrite narratives that have constructed them as hypersexual or invisible. By telling their own stories, Black Ecuadorian writers not only place Blackness into the Ecuadorian national narrative. They make their existence the center of everything. In Drums Under My Skin, Luz Argentina Chiriboga writes of Rebeca, a mulata teenager struggling to accept her Blackness while spilt between the ideological spaces of Quito and Esmeraldas. Chiriboga confronts racism in Ecuador based around mestizaje by making Blackness the sole narrative voice and rejects ideas that Blackness doesn’t belong in Ecuador. Concurrently, she …