Diana Danelys De Los Santos, known professionally as Amara La Negra, is an American singer, actress,and entertainer.
Amara La Negra is an Afro-Latina of Dominican descent. She grew up in Miami as the only child of a single mother and is most known for her role on the VH1 reality TV show Love & Hip Hop: Miami.
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Born in Miami, Amara La Negra grew up singing, dancing, and acting. Amara’s mother, Ana Maria, encouraged her daughter to embrace her natural beauty. 
As a native of the Dominican Republic, Amara’s mother came to the U.S. and raised the singer on her own in Miami. 
Ana Maria worked multiple jobs -cleaning houses, cooking, selling flowers on street corners – to pay for Amara’s dance classes and singing lessons.
At 4, she won a competition that landed her on the the wildly-successful Hispanic variety show, Sábado Gigante.
For the six years she was on the show, Amara was the only dark-skinned child in the cast and producers would always place her either way in the back of the stage or smack in the middle “like a bug in the middle of a cup of milk.”
After years of straightening perms, hot combs, and dieting Amara decided she was done policing her body.
So she took the stage name Amara La Negra, “love the black woman,” and embraced her afro.
As one of very few Latina celebrities of recognizable African ancestry, La Negra is challenging a mainstream that has excluded people like her for too long.
“There is still a lot of ignorance surrounding the Afro-Latino community, and it has given me all the reason to want to keep fighting for it”.
Photo Credit: Getty
