On October 25, 2018, Amara La Negra came to University of Wisconsin-Madison as the Keynote Speaker for the 2018 Latinx Heritage Month. Amara La Negra is a Dominican-American entrepreneur and a multi-talented artist. She is even on VH1’s Love and Hip Hop Miami. Always wearing her hair in an afro, she has been breaking stereotypes for Afro-Latinx and has been pushing the boundaries on the Latino community. Most importantly, she is an unapologetically Afro-Latina.
As she came on to the stage and throughout out the event, I was feeling her bubbly, outgoing and confident personality. She was interacting with the audience and the Q&A speakers, as they were her long-time friends. Amara has one of those personalities that makes you want to be her friend and get along with her. The best part of this event was the facts she was spilling about the Afro-Latinx community for women and blacks. She started out asking us how we were doing and was grateful to be here in Madison, despite her busy schedule. She started talking about how her mother, who is Dominican, has been supporting her and her dreams ever since she was little. Her mother has been her strongest support system and she is grateful for having that.
Amara even talked about being supportive of the Lantinx musicians such as Cardi-B and Bad Bunny, who have been taking over the music industry recently. They are an inspiration to many Latinx artists and musicians because it’s hard to get acknowledged in the music market, especially in America. Also, she wished that these artists would take out time in their schedule to attend talks at universities and other places in order to inspire and tell people about their struggles.
She touched on the topic of colorism and the Afro-Latinx community. One thing she mentioned was she didn’t like to use the terminology color, instead she preferred the term black. Amara touched on the struggles in the industry she had faced and how she overcame her insecurities. The best thing that helped her was embracing her melanin, hair and curves. This allowed to be confident in herself by not letting anyone define who she is or who she should become. She has been in the industry where people said she wasn’t Lantina enough or she wasn’t black enough, but she didn’t let those comments to stop her from climbing to the top, despite the lack of opportunities for women like her. Something she said that spoke to me was that we tended to lose our identities when trying to fit into social norms. Instead, we need to understand that not everyone will like you and you need to be okay with that. This is a statement that many people in the audience were clapping for because they knew it was true. It was nice to hear this coming from a celebrity like Amara La Negra.
As we saw, she has been breaking boundaries and stereotypes for Afro-Latinx; she said the only way these changes could occur was when we became part of the change. As we do this, we need not to just talk about the change, but we should be about the change. She encouraged us to use our social media as a platform for our voices on these important issues, such as immigration and colorism, and changes we want to make.
After the student-led Q&A discussion, the audience were able to ask her question on things like self-love, self-care, Dominican Republic, her hair routine, and the struggles she went through. At the end, she gave a special performance on her songs “Dutty Wine,” “Insecure,” and “What a Bam Bam.”
Her upcoming projects include her children book “Amarita’s Way” and her EP, which will be released in January. Currently, she is filming Season 2 of Love and Hip Hop: Miami. To know more about this distinguished spokesperson, you can follow her on instagram @amaralanegraaln or check out her music on Spotify and Youtube.
All photos courtesy of Ana Ramos Contreras