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Email this article "Made of Everything": Black Joy and Diasporic Rootedness in Melania Luisa Marte's Plantains and Our Becoming
Abstract
This article examines Melania Luisa Marte’s Plantains and Our Becoming (2023) as a work that challenges canonical diasporic and migrant narratives. Marte articulates a holistic and holy Afro-Dominican-York identity, dismantling dominant constructions of Blackness, nationalism, and mestizaje. Going beyond water as the prevailing diasporic metaphor, she turns to plantains and mangos to affirm a transnational yet rooted sense of self. While acknowledging structural racism, police abuse, and dehumanization, Marte moves beyond narratives of victimhood and displacement to foreground the African diaspora and community as sources of belonging, insisting on unapologetic Black joy and thriving as radical forms of resistance.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2026.50.2.93-105
Date of publication: 2026-07-10 10:36:22
Date of submission: 2025-10-03 11:34:56
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