The flesh was made word: reclamation of Afro-Latinas'bodies in Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X

Abstract

Latinas in the US and African American women have been traditionally studied separately. Nevertheless, this paper analyses the appropriation of US Afro-Latinas’ bodies and the strategies they employed to reclaim them through Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X. Although the teenager protagonist of the novel considers herself “morenita ,” rather than black due to her Dominican background; her body is simultaneously and paradoxically hyper-sexualized by racist discourses and called to chastity by the patriarchal Catholic doctrine presiding over her Dominican community. Despite racist and sexist forces and discourses, the protagonist reappropriates the agency over her body by embracing her sexual desire, using a selfrepresentative embodied narrative in her poetry, and performing it.