“Go wash the dishes of the whites!”: Isabel and Internalized Racism in <i>Reyita, sencillamente</i>

Abstract

The paper studies the testimonial narrative Reyita, sencillamente by Daisy Rubiera Castillo, focusing on the rejection of Isabel, the protagonist’s mother, towards her daughter. Reyita attributes it to racial discrimination since, out of her sisters, she was the one with the darkest skinned. The essay argues that such behavior manifests internalized racism, a phenomenon that, as explained by Mosonyi, Montañez, and Pineda, consists of the contempt of Afro-descendants towards themselves and others of their ethnic group due to sociocultural conditioning, which seeks to convincingly construct an image of the inferiority of themselves and similar phenotypical others. Observing the nonagenarian voice of Reyita, the paper closely follows the initial stage of Isabel's existence and part of her adult life to find the root of her attitudes. Finally, it examines passages of the work that reflect internalized racism.