Ethnicity And Identity In Contemporary Afro-Venezuelan Literature A Culturalist Approach

In this study Marvin A. Lewis examines, from a literary perspective, two central issues of Venezuelan culture - ethnicity and racial identify. By analyzing thematic and structural similarities among four important contemporary works of Venezuelan literature by authors of diverse backgrounds - two black and two nonblack writers - Lewis reveals ethnicity and racial identity to be crucial concerns of these works and their authors. Lewis begins by defining his culturalist approach. He argues that Afro-Venezuelan literature is unique in expressing some of the distinctive features of the shared, learned behaviour of that particular society. Culturalist critcism in Venezuela seeks to identify and analyze such features as the African past, myths, linguistic and thematic survivals, folk beliefs, societal inequities, and the development of an Afro-Venezuelan worldview. He offers close readings of "Nochebuena negra" by Juan Pablo Sojo, "Cumboto" by Ramon Diaz Sanchez, "Tambor: poemas para negros y mulatos" by Manuel Rodriguez Cardenas, and "Yo pienso aqui donade...estoy" by Antonio Acosta Marquez. It is possible, Lewis concludes, to see the negation of the value of blackness in this literature in relation to the dominant Venezuelan social ideology of miscegenation and deafricanization. Lewis's intrinsic and extrinsic readings of the texts incorporate supporting evidence from history, sociology and folklore as well as the usual tools of literary analysis.