Jose Gonzalez

W. E. B. Du Bois Department of African Studies
University of Massachusetts Amherst

José I González is a first-generation Afro-Latinx immigrant who managed, with his community's love and guidance, to transition from a high school pushout to a Ph.D. candidate in the Afro-American Studies program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. González has worked through Western Massachusetts' three-tier higher education system earning an associate's, bachelor's, and master's degree. As an Afro-Latinx Black Studies scholar, González is part of the recent wave of Afro-Latinxs attempting to bridge the divide between Latinx and Black Studies. Instead of perpetuating the invisibility of Afro-Latinxs with his research, González utilizes a longue durée approach centering Afro-Latinxs' experiences and contributions to the liberation struggles in the Caribbean and United States from the nineteenth century to the present.