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How AfroLatinx artists transform the body into an archive of resistance through a decolonial ciguapa aesthetic
In Ciguapa Unbound, Omaris Z. Zamora reimagines the Dominican myth of La Cigüapa to explore the untold stories of Black Dominican women. Traditionally depicted as an elusive spirit with backward-facing feet who haunts rural landscapes as a cautionary tale, La Cigüapa is brilliantly repositioned here. Zamora transforms her unbounded mobility, fugitivity, and embodied illegibility into a powerful critical analytic for understanding transnational AfroLatinx feminist thought.
Through the innovative lens of a "ciguapa aesthetic," Zamora foregrounds movement, untrackability, and trance as vital modes of Black feminist knowledge production. The book meticulously analyzes a diverse array of cultural producers, including Nelly Rosario, Ana-Maurine Lara, Loida Maritza Pérez, Josefina Báez, Cardi B, La Bella Chanel, and Firelei Báez. By examining literature, performance, visual art, and digital media, Zamora interrogates how these women navigate intersecting systems of patriarchy, white supremacy, and restrictive definitions of Latinidad across geographic borders.
Central to the book is the theorization of tranceformation, a process through which Black Dominican women navigate and reconstitute their subjectivities across geographic and cultural borders, centering the body, memory, and narrative as vital archives of knowledge production. Engaging with both theoretical analysis and personal narrative, Ciguapa Unbound calls for the reintegration of these feminist voices into a broader interdisciplinary discourse, enriching the study of Black diaspora feminisms with unique insights rooted in the lived experiences of Black Dominican women.
This landmark book is a counter-archive of Black Dominicana knowledges and histories. Against whitewashed narratives and legacies of extraction, Omaris Zamora brings the ciguapa into cultural and media studies as both a keyword and a critical epistemology. Ciguapa Unbound contests colonial maps through compelling readings of a dazzling array of works by essential writers, artists, and performers (including Josefina Báez, Nelly Rosario, Firelei Báez, Ana- Maurine Lara, and Cardi B) and through the incorporation of Zamora’s original poetry and personal journey. Zamora is a scholar of rare breadth and creativity, insightful as a critic of everything from fiction and poetry to visual and performance art and from popular music to social media. Ciguapa Unbound performs the very ciguapa aesthetics it so boldly theorizes, embodying a speculative model of situated scholarship rooted in yet extending far beyond AfroLatinx Studies. It is a fearlessly original contribution that urges us beyond the borders of the institution, to the embodied and virtual spaces of tranceformation.
— Urayoán Noel, New York University