Black Legend : The Many Lives of Raul Grigera and the Power of Racial Storytelling in Argentina

This novel-like tale of the life of, and legends surrounding, a remarkable Black celebrity and his ancestors and community, who engaged in a multigenerational struggle for recognition and belonging, will appeal to readers interested in Black lives across the Americas, and lovers of history, music and stories.

Celebrities live their lives in constant dialogue with stories about them. But when these stories are shaped by durable racist myths, they wield undue power to ruin lives and obliterate communities. Black Legend is the haunting story of an Afro-Argentine, Raúl Grigera (''el negro Raúl''), who in the early 1900s audaciously fashioned himself into an alluring Black icon of Buenos Aires'' bohemian nightlife, only to have defamatory storytellers unmake him. In this gripping history, Paulina Alberto exposes the destructive power of racial storytelling and narrates a new history of Black Argentina and Argentine Blackness across two centuries. With the extraordinary Raúl Grigera at its center, Black Legend opens new windows into lived experiences of Blackness in a ''white'' nation, and illuminates how Raúl''s experience of celebrity was not far removed from more ordinary experiences of racial stories in the flesh.