“I don’t know what it means to be a Black
woman in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.
I know how it feels. It feels as if you exist in
virtual reality, as a symbol of ‘our shared
African heritage’ … ”
—Mayra Santos-Febres, Afro-Puerto Rican novelist in Daughters of the Diaspora

Ethnogenesis:
Same ship, different ports or same trip, different ships.

“When I began looking for a job after college, I discovered that being a white Latina made me a nonthreatening minority… My color was a question only of culture… And what was a Hispanic? … . There is no such culture… ”
—Julia Alvarez, Dominican novelist in Half and Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural