The book Affect, Archive, Archipelago: Puerto Rico’s Sovereign Caribbean Lives (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) by Beatriz Llenín Figueroa will be launched online on Saturday, October 22, 2022, at 2:00pm AST. The author will be joined by panelists from Jamaica (Opal Palmer Adisa), the Bahamas (Ian Bethell Bennett), and Puerto Rico (Maritza Stanchich), who are themselves writers, professors, and intellectuals working in diverse fields. The event will be moderated by Professor Carmen Haydée Rivera. The event will be bilingual, with simultaneous interpretation and language justice work performed by Cooperativa Brújulas.

Please join the launch on Zoom:

Meeting ID: 850 8384 0340

Passcode: 966218

BOOK DESCRIPTION: Inspired by Édouard Glissant’s and Marta Aponte Alsina’s critical-creative work, this book explores how Puerto Rico’s affective archive of Caribbean relations, from the nineteenth century through the twenty-first, has envisioned and embodied decolonization and sovereignty in relation to the archipelagic, the sea, and Caribbean regionalism. The book’s transdisciplinary archive includes historical figures and their legacies; political and activist thought, textuality, and actionasperformative interventions; and performance and live arts pieces, objects, materialities, and texts aspolitical/activist actions. Affect, Archive, Archipelago begins by delving into the historical-political figures of Ramón Emeterio Betances, Luisa Capetillo, and Pedro Albizu Campos (Chapters 1-3). It then encounters the work of the live arts collective Agua, Sol y Sereno; the political/activist work of Amigxs del MAR, Comuna Caribe, Mujeres que Abrazan la Mar,and Coalición 8M (Chapter 4); and Teresa Hernández’s transdisciplinary artistic trajectory (Chapter 5). Finally, stemming from the book’s argument and the immediate historical-political-affective context of Puerto Rico’s summer 2019 rebellion (Verano Boricua), the book’s Coda offers some reflections and proposals for furthering decolonial, sovereign, archipelagic, and reparatory horizons for Puerto Rico.

Beatriz Llenín Figueroa is a companion, partner, comrade, friend, nerd, writer, editor, translator, and animal and live arts apprentice. Having completed a PhD from the Program in Literature at Duke University, she worked as an adjunct professor at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez and Río Piedras for almost a decade. Presently, she is an “independent” writer and scholar who stands for Puerto Rican and Caribbean emancipations. Her creative, intellectual, and political lives revolve around the relations between Puerto Rican and Caribbean archipelagos; islands, seas, and coasts; experimental and street theater and performance; and multiple, embodied forms of sovereignty. Some of her creative writing was published in the collection Puerto Islas: crónicas, crisis, amor (2018), while her most recent book is Affect, Archive, Archipelago: Puerto Rico’s Sovereign Caribbean Lives (2022). She is a regular columnist for the Puerto Rican newspaper, Claridad. She also works as associate editor for the small, independent Puerto Rican press, Editora Educación Emergente, and as freelance editor and translator.