Elizabeth Wright’s book, part of the Toronto Iberic series, is well designed and beautifully published on delicate matte paper. The volume is divided into two parts, each of which could stand alone. The first focuses on Juan Latino’s biography, while the second deals with Latino’s epic of Lepanto, with an epilogue entitled “Juan Latino in the Harlem Renaissance.” It should be noted that while Elizabeth Wright wrote her book, I authored mine (Juan Latino: Talent and Destiny [2016]). Yet even if both volumes deal with the same fascinating character, they offer distinct images: Wright’s deals extensively with the citations, rhetorical strategies, and figures of speech of the Latin verses, specially the Austrias Carmine (a poem to honor the role of Don Juan of Austria—illegitimate son of Emperor Charles V—in the Battle of Lepanto), while mine focuses on the personality and life experience of the Afro-Spaniard humanist in the context of the house of Sessa, the blue-blooded owners of Juan Latino, as well as on slavery in sixteenth-century Granada, in the light of newly uncovered data.

We must thank Wright for the great effort she has made to understand the Spanish cultural context that shaped Juan Latino’s works. Part 1 of her book, “From Slave to Freedman in Granada,” is based on previously located historical data (such as the baptismal records of Latino’s sons and daughters and his presence in the university senate minutes), published by Antonio Marín Ocete (“El negro Juan Latino,” Revista del Centro de Estudios Históricos de Granada y su Reino, part 1, vol. 13 [1923]: 97–120, and part 2, vol. 14 [1924]: 25–82). Other historical documents, such as Latino’s home purchase and location, a litigation about a tax levy on his houses, the 1561 parish-by-parish registry of households where Latino’s household members are described, were actually located by me, as Wright graciously mentions (Aurelia Martín Casares, La esclavitud en la Granada del siglo XVI: Género, raza y religión [2000]). As regards part 2, “Latino’s Lepanto Epic,” containing chapters 3 to 5, Wright introduces her personal and insightful interpretation of Latino’s classical epic the Austrias Carmine, placing noteworthy emphasis on the confrontation between Christians and Muslims in the Kingdom of Granada. The poem appeared for the first time in an annotated edition with facing Spanish translation and a general introduction in 1981 (José Antonio Sánchez Marín, La Austriada de Juan Latino, Introducción, traducción inédita y texto) and was later translated to English (“The Song of Juan of Austria,” in The Battle of Lepanto, ed. and trans. Sarah Spence, Elizabeth Wright, and Andrew Lemons [2014]: 289–405).

In this case, Wright introduces a contemporary methodological perspective, focusing on the dilemmas of race and religion to explain Latino’s poetry. At times, however, she seems to be carried away by Granada’s historical circumstances, magnifying the Morisco (converted Hispano-Muslim) impact on Juan Latino’s epic and identity. Her interpretation is that the choice of the Latin language in Juan Latino’s works does not simply follow from his aspirations to join the Latinate elite, but rather that it “provided Juan Latino some measure of safety from local tensions” (95), a statement that could be considered somewhat questionable. Wright argues that the Morisco revolt against the Crown (1568–71) threatened Latino’s social status, and I question this for the following reasons: Juan Latino had never been Muslim, he was raised in one of the greatest Christian aristocratic families, very close to the Crown, he was a professor of the University of Granada, and he was married to a white Christian lady; so how could a pro-Muslim revolt make him significantly vulnerable? Furthermore, Wright argues that Juan Latino published the “Song of John of Austria” in order to secure his predominant social position. However, he might have done this just as any other white Spanish writer who wrote poems on Lepanto, and there were quite a few.