ABSTRACT

This chapter explores Agnès Agboton’s 2005 memoirs Más allá del mar de arena : Una mujer africana en España [Beyond the Sea of Sand: An African Woman in Spain] as a precursor to the creative works currently being produced by millennial authors and artists of African descent. In it, Agboton illustrates the ways West African diasporas have shaped Spain’s past – and will continue to shape its future. Anna Tybinko, therefore, argues that, as a multi-chapter letter to her two sons, Axel and Didac, Más allá del mar de arena pushes the “migrant narrative” label by focusing on future generations of Afro-descendent Spaniards. Drawing on the work of Andrea O’Reilly, Patricia Hill Collins, and Dani McClain, this chapter examines how Agboton’s text operates an act of empowered mothering. It concludes by analyzing recent literary contributions such as Moha Gerehou’s ¿Qué hace un negro como tú en un sitio como este? (‘What’s a Black Person Like You Doing in a Place Like This’ 2021), Rubén H. Bermúdez’s photobook ¿Y tú, por qué eres negro? (‘And You, Why Are You Black?’ 2019), Lucía Asue Mbomío Rubio’s novel Hija del camino (‘Daughter of the Road,’ 2019), and Desirée Bela-Lobedde’s Ser mujer negra en España (‘Being a Black Woman in Spain,’ 2018), that further Agboton’s same mission to carve out space for Blackness in the Spanish imaginary.