Spelman College to Host Book Launch for “Disobedient Women” by Dr. Anastasia Valecce

Dr. Valecce Explores Decolonial Resistance Through Four Afro-Queer Puerto Rican Artists

On October 29, 2026, at 6 p.m., Spelman College will host a book launch in celebration of "Disobedient Women: Decolonial Movements of Afro-Queer Puerto Rican Artists," written by Anastasia Valecce, Ph.D., associate professor of Hispanic cultural studies at Spelman College. The launch will take place in the Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation & the Arts (CI&A).

Available for purchase on October 20, "Disobedient Women" centers the voices and aesthetics of four contemporary Afro-queer Puerto Rican artists: Gisela Rosario Ramos (Macha Colón), Awilda Rodríguez Lora, Helen Ceballos, and Awilda Sterling-Duprey. In the book, Dr. Valecce shows how these women used performance, visual art, and activism to resist colonial, racial, and gender oppression on the archipelago.

Within the context of Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship with the United States, reinforced by the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria and additional factors, Afro-queer women face heightened vulnerability under systems of colonialism, patriarchy and heteronormativity. Dr. Valecce explores how the four artists challenge dominant narratives of nationhood, family and identity while opening space for new forms of collective resistance, queer kinship, and Afro-Caribbean embodiment.

Art is not merely a form of commentary, but a necessary mode of political action—one that enables new ways of being, relating, and remembering within and beyond colonial constraint,” said Dr. Valecce in "Disobedient Women."

Dr. Valecce’s research centers on contemporary Caribbean studies with a special focus on Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. She received her bachelor’s degree in socio-cultural studies in Spain and Latin America/foreign languages and literatures from Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” in Italy. Dr. Valecce holds master’s degrees in Literary Translation to and from Spanish and Text Editing from the Università degli Studi di Siena (Italy), as well as an M.A. in Spanish from Emory University. She also earned her Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature with a focus on film from Emory University.