Contemporary U.S. Latino/a Literary Criticism

✍ Scribed by Lyn Di Iorio Sandín, Richard Perez

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 299
• Series: American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
• Edition: First Edition
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This is the first inter-group and gender inclusive collection of scholarship in U.S. Latino literary criticism that begins with the assumption that the literature written by U.S. Latinos is as important an object of scholarship as U.S. Latino/a history, sociology, and culture, fields that have dominated previous inter-group anthologies. Some of the most important and insightful Latino and Latina literary scholars in the field write on authors from the four major Latino/a groups-- Cuban American, Dominican American, Mexican American, and Puerto Rican American.  The anthology evaluates the state of U.S. Latino/a literary study and projects a vision of that study for the twenty-first century. This book is divided into four major areas of literary inquiry: analyses of the psychic relations between the Latino/a subject and its mimetic others; explorations of the complexities of race and Afro-Latino/a poetics; studies of the representation of labor in the Latino/a literary imagination; and genealogical and archival assessment of U.S. Latino literature’s relationship with American, Caribbean, and Latin American literatures and histories. 

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
About the Contributors......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 14
Introduction: New Waves in U.S. Latino/a Literary Criticism......Page 16
Part I: Desire for the Other......Page 28
1 The Latino Scapegoat: Knowledge through Death in Short Stories by Joyce Carol Oates and Junot Díaz......Page 30
2 Alternative Visions and the Souvenir Collectible in Nelly Rosario's Song of the Water Saints......Page 50
Part II: Afro-Latino/a Poetics......Page 76
3 Spirited Identities: Creole Religions, Creole/U.S. Latina Literature, and the Initiated Reader......Page 78
4 Racial Spills and Disfigured Faces in Piri Thomas's Down These Mean Streets and Junot Díaz's "Ysrael"......Page 108
Part III: Archives, Histories, and Genealogies......Page 128
5 The Once and Future Latino: Notes Toward a Literary History Todavía Para Llegar......Page 130
6 Hurricanes, Magic, Science, and Politics in Cristina García's The Agüero Sisters......Page 158
7 Latin Americans and Latinos: Terms of Engagement......Page 180
8 "Inheriting" Exile: Cuban-American Writers in the Diaspora......Page 198
Part IV: Ideology and Labor......Page 222
9 "So Your Social is Real?" Vernacular Theorists and Economic Transformation......Page 224
10 Oscar Hijuelos: Writer of Work......Page 242
11 Mass Production of the Heartland: Cuban American Lesbian Camp in Achy Obejas's "Wrecks"......Page 262
B......Page 292
D......Page 293
G......Page 294
K......Page 295
M......Page 296
P......Page 297
S......Page 298
Z......Page 299