Journalist Natasha S. Alford explores Afro-Latina identity in book 'American Negra'
"I was looking for my identity as a Black woman, but also as an American."
Journalist and digital media executive Natasha S. Alford has explored her Black and Puerto Rican roots in numerous projects including the documentary "Afro-Latinx Revolution: Puerto Rico," which she directed and produced.
She recently released a memoir "American Negra," which discusses her upbringing in a working-class, multiethnic family, making connections between Black America and the Afro-Latin diaspora.
Alford spoke with ABC News' Linsey Davis about her book and her upbringing.
ABC NEWS LIVE: What made you decide? You know, you're a young lady -- this is the time to write my memoir.
NATASHA S. ALFORD: Yes, there's a certain, I guess, boldness to write about your life so young. But I really did write this book for young people. I had them in mind. I think too often we tell stories of success in America, and we don't talk about those messy early years. And I wanted to unmask all of that. This is really a story about the American dream. I came from a public school system, working-class family. I went on to Harvard, and some people would think that's the happy ending. But I want to complicate that.
I was looking for purpose. I was looking for my identity as a Black woman, but also as an American. And that's what the book is about.
ABC NEWS LIVE: I found that we had a lot in common. Number one, Syracuse was my first TV market, which you talked about going for, that interview. But there was something that struck me because you were talking about how you're a proud New Yorker, but for upstate New York, and that often doesn't have the same feel, vibes as those who are in New York City.
But you wrote this and it shocked me because you were really talking about this peaceful drive. You say, "I took in the June breeze blowing through the window, which I rolled down with a hand-crank. As I exhaled, I decided to instigate a conversation sparked by our latest visit to the suburbs. Mommy, I want to be white."
What made you feel that? And obviously at that young age, this is something that really still stuck with you all this time.
ALFORD: Yes. So with that story, I wanted to highlight that children see caste. They see social caste and they see racial caste. So did I literally want to be white at five years old? No, I was saying something I knew was controversial, but I was pointing out to my mother that every weekend we went, we babysat for doctors who lived in this really nice neighborhood. But I only saw white people in that neighborhood. And when we went back to the city, I saw that it was mostly African Americans, Puerto Ricans. And so even though we didn't technically have segregation, there was still this reality of segregation.
ABC NEWS LIVE: And you also talk about how when you were growing up, you didn't have the Black president who was on TV or these Black examples in the world at large. Do you feel like we were talking about you have a 3-year-old son now. You feel like it's going to be a very different world for him growing up.
ALFORD: It's a different world. I have to say. I'm disappointed. In my 30s now, my mid 30s, I was a millennial who really believed that America was getting better automatically every year, despite our history of pain and strife with racism. And I've seen this rollback, almost a backlash to progress that has reminded me that we truly have to fight for progress. It is not easily given or handed over. And this fight is happening across the diaspora, which is why this book is called "American Negra," because I wanted to show that it's not just African Americans.
ABC NEWS LIVE: You've said that you've grappled with the term biracial. Why is that?
ALFORD: Because the assumption is that when I say I'm an African American woman and a Latina woman, that people think that automatically makes me biracial. That's not possible because there are Latinos who are white and there are Latinos who are Black. So you would need to know the racial makeup of my parents before you could assume that I was biracial.
We're not thinking about the fact that there is racial stratification in Latin American countries that in certain places, again, slavery was a part of many of these societies. So although the face of Latinidad is the, you know, mestizo, somebody who is brown so to speak, not all Latinos are brown. And so that's why I say you can't assume that I'm biracial.
Related Topics
Related Stories
ABC News Live