Spending my most formative years growing up in the city of Brooklyn, New York, I was surrounded by Black and Latina women of different body shapes, using colors, and bodily embellishments creatively in their fashion and self-representation, which seemed beautiful and fascinating to me. Until I learned to classify them as “other”… As a young white girl experiencing the world and all its differences, I learned to classify these groups as “other” based on their bodily aesthetic, the very aesthetics that society warned me about. Enter the monograph titled, Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment, by Jillian Hernandez, the book that breaks down my childhood thoughts surrounding a topic called “aesthetic excess.” Hernandez examines the concept of aesthetic excess through the stories of working-class Black and Latina women from Miami. By amplifying these voices, the author sheds more light on ways that Black and Latina women in Miami have separated themselves from the prescribed white norms around gender, race, sexuality, and the neoliberal view of class.

Continue reading “Book Review – Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment“ →