Reading Black Female Voices in Spain: Towards a translation history of African American women’s literature

Abstract

This paper presents a descriptive approach to the reception of African American women’s literature in Spain through the study of its translation history. In this context, the first part of the paper describes the endeavor of developing AfroBib, a bibliographical tool that compiles exhaustive data about translations of African American women authors published in Spain. The second part of the paper discusses the translation history of African American women’s literature in the target country based on the statistical analysis of the data provided by our main research tool. The results display clear evidence of the increase in the circulation of African American women’s works and illustrate a complex network of social and literary factors that have influenced choices and strategies governing the translation of African American women writers in the country. This study offers unprecedented data, thereby holding out the prospect of encouraging parallel research lines.