We are delighted to celebrate the publication of Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz, the new book by Karma Frierson, who was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and is currently Assistant Professor at the Frederick Douglass Institute & Department of Black Studies at the University of Rochester.
In this compelling study, the author explores how Blackness—both Afro-Caribbean and regionally rooted—is woven into the cultural fabric of Veracruz. Through local traditions, history, and everyday life, she reveals how residents internalize and express the centrality of Blackness in shaping regional identity.
Local Color offers an important contribution to our understanding of race, culture, and belonging in Latin American port cities.