In
The
Borders of Dominicanidad
Lorgia García-Peña explores the ways official narratives and
histories have been projected onto racialized Dominican bodies as a
means of sustaining the nation's borders. García-Peña constructs a
genealogy of dominicanidad that highlights how Afro-Dominicans,
ethnic Haitians, and Dominicans living abroad have contested these
dominant narratives and their violent, silencing, and exclusionary
effects. Centering the role of U.S. imperialism in drawing racial
borders between Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the United States,
she analyzes musical, visual, artistic, and literary representations
of foundational moments in the history of the Dominican Republic: the
murder of three girls and their father in 1822; the criminalization
of Afro-religious practice during the U.S. occupation between 1916
and 1924; the massacre of more than 20,000 people on the
Dominican-Haitian border in 1937; and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
García-Peña also considers the contemporary emergence of a broader
Dominican consciousness among artists and intellectuals that offers
alternative perspectives to questions of identity as well as the
means to make audible the voices of long-silenced Dominicans.
