BOOK REVIEW: Ortiz, P. (2018). An African American and Latinx history of the United States

Abstract

Paul Ortiz approaches the book from a historical perspective as he explores the relationships between Latin American, Caribbean, and American history. The author presented a kind of camaraderie and shared experiences between the oppressed people living in the United States, the Caribbean, Central, and South America.Throughout the book, he chronologically poses his arguments to explain the extraordinary journey individuals, groups, and agencies took to fight for emancipation in those places. Ortiz reveals the potential to form an international community aimed to overcome the residual effects of imperialism and colonialism.Ortiz begins by walking readers through various experiences that allowed him to claim his Latinx roots boldly. Moreover, he implores the reader to understand his use of the,sometimes, political terms "Black," "Brown," and Latinx. Certainly, Ortiz shows the potential kinships between African Americans and Latinx peoples that is worth exploring in the current social studies curriculum. Moreover, his use of "x" after the word "Latin" deliberately includes the LGBTQ+ community in this reenvisioned narrative of American history. While Ortiz uses the term Latinx throughout the book, there were no explicit narratives presented to outline LGBTQ+ contributions in the joint fight against imperialism in the Americas. While a missed opportunity, still, by entering "x" as the new terminology about Latinx thinkers, Ortiz helps to make the invisible,somewhat visible.