Being Latina in the Hip-Hop Era: A Dominican-American in the Mix

Defining itself from itself. Not negating the other. Me, the other of the other. Me, feeling the feeling. No discourse needed. Identity. A mere feeling. Feelings, filling up worlds. -Josefina Báez, Comrade Bliss... [ view full abstract ]

Defining itself from itself.
Not negating the other.
Me, the other of the other.
Me, feeling the feeling.
No discourse needed.
Identity.
A mere feeling.
Feelings, filling up worlds.
-Josefina Báez, Comrade Bliss Ain’t Playing

Abstract
Bird of Paradise is the first coming-of-age memoire in New York City written by a second generation Dominican-American author. Her author, hip-hop journalist and documentary filmmaker Raquel Cepeda, tells an “un-disciplined” story about the struggles she faced both in her private and public space to discover, shape, and reconcile the many layers of her identity(ies) amidst the urban challenges of growing up Dominican in Harlem and Washington Heights during the 1980’s and 1990’s. The memoire illustrates the constant tribulations she faced since her childhood in a context where, in the words of Wendy Roth, Latino/a origin is regarded either as “an aspect of ethnicity, as with a binary U.S. schema […] or as a race, by adopting a Hispanicized U.S. schema” (152). Likewise, Cepeda’s memoire illustrates the various strategies employed by her to negotiate what she calls her “hyphenated identity” . With this in mind, in the first part of the book (what constitute the memoire), the author takes us on a journey to her parents’ life and her intermittent stays after her birth in the Dominican Republic and her life in The United States (mostly in New York City) during the 1980’s and 1990’s. Drawing from Roth’s reflections on Latino identity and race in “Performing Race Strategically”, the positioning of Puerto Rican culture and identity as explained by Juan Flores in From Bomba to Hip Hop, and Raquel Z. Rivera’s monographic on Hip Hop and New York Ricans, I argue that Cepeda’s memoire serves various purposes that stem from her need to reconcile with the tragic events of her family life. In other words, by examining her family’s past, Cepeda is able to trace key moments that led to an incessant performance of what I call Dominican-latinidad in a period of radical reconfiguration of the Latino community in New York City. In this presentation, I will provide a general recount of some of those key family events. Then, I will focus on few instances that illustrate Cepeda’s strategies to negotiate her life in an ethno-racial, hyphenated identity. Lastly, I will examine the role of hip-hop in Cepeda’s journey to becoming Latina and how she positions not only herself, but Dominicans alike, at the center of the discussions on the relationship between Latino identity and hip-hop in New York City.