Making Livable Worlds

When hurricanes Irma and María made landfall in Puerto Rico in September 2017, their destructive force further devastated an archipelago already pummeled by economic austerity and the decline of liberal democratic governance and its safety net programs. Within the context of the economic, political, and environmental turmoil of contemporary Puerto Rico, Llorâens centers the work, activism, and lives of those often erased within Puerto Rican society: Black Puerto Rican women. Engaging with anthropology, history, and autobiography, Llorâens situates her own kinfolk in the island's southeast region, a sugar-producing area home to a large Afro-descendant community. Combining autoethnographic narration with the insights of Black studies and decolonial anthropology, Llorâens focuses on practices of mutual care, reciprocity, and solidarity that sustain Black women in the immediate aftermath of these disasters, and which provide the basis for these often excluded communities to survive and thrive, relying on Black ecological knowledge developed over hundreds of years. Narratively rich in its attention to everyday forms of struggle, Making Livable Worlds foregrounds Black women's agency and ongoing efforts to build a good life for themselves and their communities.