| Chapter I: | Essay I: Aesthetic Blackness in the Creative Literature of the Latin/Hispanic Reality |
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Afro Latin writers for comparable characterizations. More often than not, when the black or nonwhite author uses distinguishing signs of physiognomy in the construction of a character—among other symbols—they serve as a guide to the person's ethnicity without resorting to caricatures or inane descriptions (Boyd, “The Concept of Black Esthetics” 224). However, absolutely nothing was accomplished literarily with Truque's descriptors such as “jetón” [“big-lipped”] or “color Negro ceniza…característica de Negro enfermo” [“ashy black color…like that of sick black people”] for Ayala except to draw attention to the author's negative mindset where blackness is concerned. Could this be a case of the insoluble identity question that critics find so prevalent in some Afro Latin depictions (Lewis 176–177; emphasis added)? Or is it another dimension of the miscegenated individual comparing his or her blackness to the blackness of the non- or slightly mixed-race individual?
When diagrammed as a skin tone with stereotypical characteristics, black, for some Latin American writers who perceive themselves as socially black but phenotypically not quite black enough, connotes a subtle posture of quiet rebellion against being grouped under the rubric of generic blackness. Or, it can denote a vacillating self-acceptance of being black in the absence of being recognized as mestizado, that is, a mixed-race person. Such is the impression of himself—in this case, quiet rebellion—that Truque projects with Ayala, who is constructed with a semiotic imagery of being a grotesque representative of black people collectively—“característica de Negro enfermo” [“a characteristic of sick black people”]—without an obvious raison d’être. Truque's use of the modifiers “astute” and “intelligent” do not counterbalance the negative symbology. Why would this approach to characterization be needed if not to highlight the unspoken statement: “he is black, and you also call me black”? This disposition where questions of race and color are concerned demonstrates just how ingrained the attitude that molds perceptions of race and color has become in the Latin world and the effect it can assume in the fictive world of creative literature.1 At some point in a person's life, they might have an epiphany that monolithic blackness is perhaps not what they perceive for themselves. In Truque's