Another Four Women: AfroCubana Entrepreneurs as Womanist Praxis

ABSTRACT This article is focused on four Black women entrepreneurs in Cuba's lucrative bed and breakfast home‐based tourism economy, asking: (1) what intersectional factors facilitated their entrepreneurial enterprises, (2) how they conceptualize success, and (3) how their narratives illuminate patterns involving gendered race in the country's increasingly market‐oriented context, and what opportunities might be on the horizon? Their narratives provide a praxis that demonstrates how despite their distinct paths to cuentapropismo (self‐employment), socialist values largely shape their conceptions of success. Nonetheless, historic tropes from the prerevolutionary era involving White (or foreign) patriarchal gatekeepers reveal themselves, even with evidence of potential patrons who were previously inaccessible due to similar social marginalization. By centering these Black women's voices and experiences, this project uses womanism as theory in action.