Latining America

With Latining America, Claudia Milian proposes that the economies of blackness, brownness, and dark brownness summon a new grammar for Latino/a studies that she names Latinities. Milians innovative study argues that this ensnared economy of meaning startles the typical reading practices deployed for brown Latino/a embodiment. Latining America keeps company with and challenges existent models of Latinidad, demanding a distinct paradigm that puts into question what is understood as Latino and Latina today. Milian conceptually considers how underexplored Latin participantsthe southern, the black, the dark brown, the Central Americanhave ushered in a new world of Latined signification from the 1920s to the present. Examining not who but what constitutes the Latino and Latina, Milians new critical Latinities disentangle the brown logic that marks Latino/a subjects. She expands on and deepens insights in transamerican discourses, narratives of passing, popular culture, and contemporary art. This daring and original project uncovers previously ignored and unremarked upon cultural connections and global crossings whereby African Americans and Latinos traverse and reconfigure their racialized classifications.