Black, Muslim, Brazilian, Slave: Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua’s Interesting Narrative and Its Challenges to Latinidad and to the Slave Narrative in the 21 st Century 1 Astrid Haas, Bielefeld University, Germany The presentation deals with the ways Mahommah Baquaqua and his Interesting Narrative: Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua (1854) defy conventional notions of latinidad and Latin American literature, on the one hand, and of the genre of the black slave narrative of the Americas, on the other. The text is the only known life narrative by a former slave that testi- fies to the experience of African slavery in Brazil and which was published during its author’s lifetime (Austin 8, 160; Bergad 83; Law / Lovejoy 3-4). It further belongs to a handful of au- to-/biographical narratives by and about West African Muslim slaves in the New World. I have chosen to discuss Baquaqua’s life story and Narrative not because they are uniquely representative of Latin America or slavery (see also Law / Lovejoy 82; Bergad 94) but as one of a host of possible case studies that show how individual life stories and literary texts have been challenging definitions of key terms and ways of thought. The concept of latinidad is to this day predominantly linked to an Iberian, often im- plicitly Spanish, or a mestizo heritage, to Spanish (or, less commonly, Portuguese) language competence and literacy, to a Christian, especially Catholic, religious identity, and to the no- tion of superiority to the “color line”-based racism of the United States. As a consequence, the experiences and cultural contributions of other ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups fre- quently remain underrepresented in socio-political debates about Latin Americanness as well as in Latin American Studies, despite their documented historical relevance (Kirschner 1-12, 32-38). In a similar vein, international discourses about slavery in the Americas are marred by a comparative focus on the United States and the Caribbean archipelago. Yet, Brazil was the single largest destination of the transatlantic slave trade (Akande 4-11, 44). “During the period of slavery, ten times as many Africans came to Spanish and Portuguese America (5.7 million) than to the United States (560,000)” (Andrews 3). Among these, scholars estimate, “from the 16 th to the 19 th century […] as many as 30,000 to 3 million Muslims of various ethnicities and geographical backgrounds were abducted from West Africa and enslaved in the Americas” 1 This paper is a presentation given at the 36 th International Congress of the Latin American Studies Associa- tion, Barcelona, Spain, 26 May 2018. © Astrid Haas, June 1, 2018.