The Chosen One's Epiphany: Autoethnography in Zapata Olivella

Abstract

Manuel Zapata Olivella is considered one of the most important Afro-Colombian writers and, probably, the Afro-Colombian thinker of greater transcendence in the country. This article proposes that, in the manner of the Religious Autobiography, following Fernando Durán López, in the works He visto la noche: las raíces de la furia negra (1953) and La rebelión de los genes (1997), Zapata Olivella constructs some autoethnographies through which he presents himself as a chosen one to narrate the journey of the black people in the Americas, supported by an experience of epiphany.