Scholar, activist, and author of Afro-Latinx culture
Miriam Jiménez Román (June 11, 1951 – August 6, 2020) was a Puerto Rican scholar, activist, and author on
Afro-Latino culture, whose work is described as "without a doubt ... [making] an enormous contribution to the theoretical discussion surrounding Latinidad in the United States."[1] Her work on Afro-Latinidad was foundational to the field of cultural studies in that she developed programming, research, and spaces for the various Afro-Latino communities in the United States.[citation needed]
Biography
First, we're not in a post racial state. Race is still a very important part of how all of us – globally – live our lives. African-Americans and Latinos need to get together, create change that will benefit not just Latinos and African-Americans but all people of color.
Miriam Jiménez Román, Los Afro-Latinos Q&A with Miriam Jiménez Román, March 2012[2]
Jiménez Román was born on June 11, 1951, in
Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. Miriam graduated from Manhattan's
High School of Art and Design in 1969,[3] She was a
visiting scholar in Africana Studies at
New York University.[4] Along with her husband,[5]Juan Flores, she was co-editor of the Afro-Latin@ Studies Reader: History and Culture in the United States, a collection of essays, short stories, poetry, memoirs, interviews and writing on the Afro-Latino experience.[6] The work was described as "a corrective text that helps fill in crucial scholarly gaps" in a field, Afro-Latina/o studies, in which there is very little scholarship.[7] It "makes accessible ... a virtually ignored set of important contributions ... to the study of Afro-Latina/os", and, "makes a critical intervention in scholarship and public discourse about racial identities and the history and culture of U.S. Afro-Latina/o communities."[8] Jiménez Román and Flores received an
American Book Award for The Afro-Latin@Reader in 2011.[9]
Her other publications included "Un hombre (negro) del pueblo: José Celso Barbosa and the Puerto Rican Race Towards Whiteness",[10] "Looking at that Middle Ground: Racial Mixing as Panacea?",[11] and "Triple-Consciousness? Approaches to Afro-Latino Culture in the United States."[12]
She was executive director of the Afrolatin@ forum from 2011 to 2020.[13][14] She was also a member of the Black Latinas Know Collective[15] and a member of the advisory board for the Encyclopedia Africana.[16]
She was profiled on
Remezcla as the first of "8 Afro Latinos Who Made Important Contributions to US History",[17] by Mitú as an "Afro-Latino Figure Who Changed The World For The Good",[18] and by
Latina as one of "6 Afro-Latinas Who Are Changing the World!".[19]
^Jiménez Román, Miriam. "Un hombre (negro) del pueblo: José Celso Barbosa and the Puerto Rican Race Towards Whiteness." Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Volume 8, 1996.
^Jiménez Román, Miriam. "Looking at that Middle Ground: Racial Mixing as Panacea?" Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and its Diaspora 8, no. 1 (Winter, 2005): 65-79.
ProQuest200320234.