(Ricourt, Milagros) Milagros Ricourt is a professor of Latin American and Puerto Rican studies at Lehman College, the City University of New York. She is the author of Women in Latin America and Dominicans in New York City: Power from the Margins, and coauthor of Hispanas de Queens: Latino Panethnicity in a New York City Neighborhood. The Dominican Racial Imaginary: Surveying the Landscape of Race and Nation in Hispaniola (Rutgers University Press), her latest book, begins with a simple question: why do so many Dominicans deny the African components of their DNA, culture, and history? Building on the work of theorists ranging from Edward Said to Édouard Glissant, this book expands our understanding of how national and racial imaginaries develop, why they persist, and how they might be subverted. As it confronts Hispaniola’s dark legacies of slavery and colonial oppression, The Dominican Racial Imaginary also delivers an inspiring message on how multicultural communities might cooperate to disrupt the enduring power of white supremacy.
