Aguanile- Amina Gautier – Afro Latinidades

Entry Questions

What topics from the sources we have discussed during the second half of the semester would you like to see in the final? Propose a preliminary question.

What themes would like to include in next week’s conversation with Amina Gautier?

Bio

Dr. Amina Gautier is an Afro-Boricua award-winning writer and academic. She is the author of three short story collections, many individual stories, and works of literary criticism.

Now We Will Be Happy is a prize-winning collection of stories about Afro-Puerto Ricans, U.S.-born Puerto Ricans, and displaced native Puerto Ricans living between spaces while attempting to navigate the unique culture that defines Puerto Rican identity. Amina Gautier’s characters deal with the difficulties of bicultural identities in a world that wants them to choose only one.

Songs are prominently featured in many of the stories in the collection. Directly or indirectly the music alluded to in various stories also reflects the experiences of native Puerto Ricans, Nuyoricans, and Afro-Puerto Ricans.

The short story “Aguanile” uses the song by Héctor Lavoe and Willie Colón of the same title to portray the emotional ties and fractures of a Puerto Rican family spread out between NY and Puerto Rico. Gautier explores the possibilities of intergenerational bonding, troubled masculinities, the failures of (grand)father figures, and the importance of Afro-Caribbean music (Salsa) as a grounding cultural phenomenon for Puerto Ricans in the US and the archipelago.

Héctor Lavoe, (born Héctor Juan Pérez Martínez) was a Puerto Rican salsa singer. Lavoe is considered to be possibly the best and most important singer and interpreter in the history of salsa music because he helped to establish the popularity of this musical genre in the decades of 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. His personality, style, and the qualities of his voice led him to a successful artistic career in the whole field of Latin music and salsa during the 1970s and 1980s. The clearness and brightness of his voice, coupled with impeccable diction and the ability to sing long and fast phrases with total naturalness, made him one of the favorite singers of the Latin public.