U.S. Latino Literature

, I am indebted to the scholarly insight that you have shared with me throughout this journey and the crucial ways that you have shaped my project as viii it evolved since my initial prospectus meeting in 2011. The focus and clarity of my completed dissertation is undoubtedly the result of the formative conversations I've held with each of you during the course of the writing and revision process. Rosaura, I had never seriously considered going to graduate school until you planted the seed in my mind during junior year of my undergraduate career when I took your course on Latin American women's literature, and I am so honored to have worked closely with you ever since. Your unwavering faith in my abilities, your support in the face of the different challenges I've faced along the way, and the example you have set for me, along with so many other young, idealistic scholars like myself, can never be repaid. The countless conversations we've had about literature and politics, Frederic Jameson, Hispanophone Caribbean literature, David Harvey, and the greats among Latina literature, including one of our mutual favorites, Helena María Viramontes, have constantly pushed me to think critically and to continue refining my understanding of theory and literary analysis. Furthermore, your patience and the time you've dedicated to reading every draft, from the days of my qualifying exams, to each chapter version, dissertation synopsis, fellowship application, and everything in between, have kept me on track and led me to the finish line. Max, your guidance from afar during my qualifying period, and in-person in recent years, has challenged me to avoid thinking too essentially and to backup my statements with concrete evidence and well-developed theoretical arguments in order to always put my best foot forward. It was my undergraduate studies with both Max and Misha Kokotovic that kept me engaged and invested in Latin American literature, from the Southern Cone, testimonio in Central American literature and the Latin American ix Boom to the Mexican Student Movement and indigenous literature. Misha, your guidance early in my graduate career on Central American testimonio and literature addressing state-instituted violence contributed immensely to my growth as a scholar and my comprehension of the complexity of Latin American politics and U.S. imperialism. Jody Blanco, your scholarship on modernity and anti-imperialism has informed my work in significant ways, and your encouragement has done the same. Luis Alvarez, I have truly benefitted from your "outsider's" perspective and the historical approach that you have lent to my project, which has further enriched my own scholarship and informed my growing commitment to an interdisciplinary humanities approach to research and writing. Beatrice Pita, you have pushed and shaped me as a scholar, teacher, and individual in more ways than you know. First and foremost, I am forever grateful to you for introducing me to the work of José Luis González and Emilio Díaz Valcárcel on the Korean War and for encouraging my development of the project that ended up forming the basis of my dissertation. Your commitment to an engaged, ever-evolving form of pedagogy and learning has contributed to my continual growth as a teacher and thinker, and your dedication to the Spanish language has gone a long way in strengthening and reinforcing my own command of Spanish. You have equipped so many of us in the Spanish program with the skills, strength, and resilience necessary to persevere and succeed in this discipline, and for that I thank you. I am also deeply thankful for the guidance I've gained along the way during my undergraduate and graduate careers from so many inspiring teachers, including

When the rich steal from the poor it is called business, when the poor protest it is called violence. When the natives follow their millennial migrations across America, they are called undocumented illegal aliens. When the Europeans, invade, commit genocide and steal America, they call themselves immigrants and pilgrims. The united Nations and the Red Cross are concerned and sometimes respond to atrocities throughout the world, never to atrocities in the United States of America and its borderland wall of death more than 1000 miles long, so long the boundaries can be seen from outer space! Language is the most important tool of humankind, and by the act of genesis, of all life. After all, before we became human there was language, as it continues to be present in creation itself. We hear that dogs communicate or emit what could be language: "au au" in Brazil, "ham ham" in Albania, "wang wang" in China, "guau guau" in Mexico, and "bow wow" in the United States. A variant of their language is "Grrr…" Metaphorically we say there is the language of music, poetry, art, science, mathematics, and that there is a family of languages. Academically this most complex human system of communication is broken down into philology, etymology, grammar, phonetics, diction, verbs, nouns, gerunds, adjectives, possessives, past, and present tenses. To delve into language minutiae gets extremely mind boggling, mysterious, and either headachy or rapturous depending on your love or hate for insights on language. Leaving the origins, extensions, variants, dialects, specific language branches, and evolution of nationally collective forms of expression to scientists, poets and dreamers, I shall focus here on a very specific use and abuse of language: how language has A poet speaks about ... The use and abuse of language by a Chicano from Aztlán (both words unknown) Language Value 4 (2), 107-116

Latinx cultures are often environmental but hardly ever identify as environmentalist. In contrast to environmentalisms that fixate on preserving the wilderness and saving endangered animals, Latinx writers have seen humankind's relationship to the environment in different terms, situating the forms of environmental injustice that affect Latinxs in the long history of colonial violence. These forms of injustice comprise part of what Rob Nixon terms "slow violence," calamities that occur incrementally or at scales that elude normal human perception. This class examines the various ways Latinx writers and artists have represented slow violence as well as the possibilities for environmental justice they envision. Bringing ecocriticism together with decolonial critique reveals how Latinx writers have produced a vital body of environmental thought and imagine new forms of environmental justice. This is a general education course that satisfies the Literature requirement (LIT) for the Queens College Core under the CUNY General Education structure called Pathways.

In literary theory, the works of (ethnic) minority authors–and similarly, the works of authors dealing with minorities–are often referred to as “assimilation narrative.” This term tends to suggest that minority authors, who write in the language of their country, seek a place in society through assimilation. Assimilation, however, means melting up in the majority nation by adopting all the values, customs and way of life characteristic of the majority, and abandoning, leaving behind, giving up the original traditional values, ethics, lifestyle, religion etc. of the minority. Assimilation means disappearing without a trace, continuing life as a new person, with new values, language, a whole set of new cultural assets. In this paper an effort is made to show that this is in fact not what many of the ethnic minority writers look for, so the term assimilation narrative is in many, although certainly not all, the cases, erroneuosly applied. It is justified to make a distinction between a...

Author(s): Rochin, Refugio I | Abstract: My presentation has three objectives: first, to address the historical origins, and challenges facing U.S. Latinos; second, to expand on the national interest in U.S. Latinos and the surfacing issues of our relations with African-Americans, and, third, to advocate coalition building and suggest ways of working together.

La coDcesión de un Premio Pulitzer representa, cuando menos, la popularización del galardonado; sin embargo, el futuro de la obra en cuestión, desvanecido su momento de gloría, puede no pasar de una reíerencia bibliográfica más. Cuando en 1990 se concedió el Pulitzer a The Mambo Kings Piay Songs of Lave su autor apenas si era (re)conocido en el mundo de las letras. Su primer libro OurHouse in the Last World (1983) ya apuntaba algunos de los problemas que aparecerán en obras sucesivas. El presente ensayo interrelaciona tas distintas obras de este autor de ascendencia cubana, señalando las derivaciones existentes entre Mambo Kings y su novela más reciente, The Fouríeen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien. El tema de la emigración será en todos los casos el punto de arranque, pero el tratamiento de los personajes femeninos adquirirá progresivamente una novedosa dimensión. A Pulitzer Prize in Fiction means inunediate fame and fortune, but it does not guarantee immortalíty. No one but the author's kinfolk is likely now to recall Emest Poole's His Family, which won in 1918, ihe same year that Willa Cather's My Antonia appeared. Harold L. Davis's Honey in the Hom has lost its savor since 1936, when it won the Pulitzer and William Faulkner's Absaiom Absalom! did not. Who ís now minding The Store, the novel that eamed T. S. Stribling a Pulitzer in 1933? When the Pulitzer jury chose The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love for its 1990 award, the boisterous and bawdy new book seemed destined to be at least as long-playing as the fictional 1956 recording from which it takes its title. Wrilten by Osear Hijuelos, who was bom, in New York in 1951, to Cuban immigrants, Aífl/n¿o Kings recounts the foiled ambitions of Cesar and Néstor Castillo, who arrh^e in New York from Havana in 1949, bungiy for success. It is not a Pulitzer but rather a shot on the / Love Lucy show that provides the Castillo brothers with theú* single iostant of grandeur. Nothing ever again lives up to the luminous moment in 1955 when Cesar and Néstor put ín a bríef, musical carneo as fictional cousins of Desi Amaz on the popular TV program. Most of The Mambo Kings Ís an elabórate Qashback from a night in 1980 that the sexagenarian Cesar spends in the Hotel Splendour, a Manhattan ílophouse that has deteriorated as much as be has. It is here, during his final, boozy hours, that Cesar listens to the recording he made in 1956 and tecalis erotic escapadas in that same room with Vanna Vane, Miss Mambo of June, 1954. At the end of the day, he reconstructs a thwarted life wbose themes are sex, love, memory, and music

Invisibility, displacement, and the immigrant experience are all key themes of US Latinx literature, and recently, more writers who identify as Colombian-American have garnered attention for their narratives that approach these subject matters.  In this interview, writer Patricia Engel speaks about representing the Colombian and Latinx diasporic experience in her work.  Engel also discusses her evolution as a writer and her research process throughout her novels Vida (2010), It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris (2013), and The Veins of the Ocean (2016), as well as the importance of authenticity to history and geography within the representation of global communities.

Tesis para optar al Grado de Magíster en Literatura con Mención en Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana. Universidad de Playa Ancha, Valparaíso, Chile, 2014.

Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Master in Arts in Literature with Specialization in American and British Literature, Universidad de Playa Ancha, Valparaíso, Chile, 2014.

ABSTRACT

The aim of the following investigation is to study the urban imaginary of
New York City portrayed in the narrative work of U.S. Latino/a authors
during the last fifty years, using as primary sources three selected texts: "In Nueva York” by Nicholasa Mohr; “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love” by Oscar Hijuelos; and “Fishlight: A Dream of Childhood” by Cecile
Pineda.

The hypothesis of the study states that the urban imaginary of New York
City portrayed in the selected texts can be described as both a divided and
translated city, based on the concepts defined by Hana Wirth-Nesher in her book “City Codes”. Into the build environment of New York City, we are
going to analyze how El Barrio constitutes a relevant space that allows the Latino identity to find a trench to maintain its essentiality, and at the same time constitutes a unit whose social walls contribute to maintain the
otherness status of Latinos in the city. Regarding the human environment of the city, we are going to analyze how Latino stereotypes arise, contributing to the portrayal of a divided city. And, regarding the verbal environment of the city, we are going to analyze how the language used by the characters reflects a translated city, helping them to allow their desire to reduce the distance between “home” and New York City, by the use of Spanish, and also how the mastery of English reflects the social walls that build a divided city.

To work on these hypotheses, we relied on the concepts that Hana
Wirth-Nesher developed to carry on the study of the urban environment in
narrative texts, dividing the city into four aspects, and in her encapsulating
idea of the four strategies the characters could have to read the urban
environment. Starting with a brief revision of the bibliography about the
city and New York City in the American literature, we will follow with the
characterization of U.S. Latino/a Literature, and then moving to describe
the concepts of Wirth-Nesher. Then, we will specify our hypothesis, to
finalize with the analysis of the primary texts, and the conclusions of the
study.

Key Words City – U.S. Latino/a Literature – New York City – Latino
Identity – Cultural Studies and Literature.

The word identity is defined as the set of personal and behavioral characteristics which define an individual as a member of a certain group. Based on race, ethnicity, religion, language and culture people distinguish themselves from other groups and form their understanding and pride in who they are. However, individuals may possess more than one cultural identity as a result of geographical and social mobility and their desire for belonging to a particular community.

iSabes quC? Ora como que apaiio guergiienza, siempre camellando como un pinchi animal, Cse, ustC que ha leyido tantos "comics." iQut semos slaves, nosotros la ram? luego Cse . . . es come si le filieran a uno 10s higados. All& Cse, pos es uno "greaser," "un mexican," viene uno a d , tse, y quesque uno es "pocho;" me empieza a cuadrar que me llamen "chicane," bato; me cai a toda madre, carnal, siquiera ya es uno, algo, no cualquier greaser o pocho. iQut no? UstC que ha leyido tantos funnys, carnalito, iquC semos Cse? -Bueno . . . pues mtxico-americanos.

Comienzo esta presentación con el muy debatido término de "bilingüismo", algo que los filósofos franceses Deleuze y Guattari a penas mencionan en sus escritos, pero que es crucial en el tema de lo "menor" en la literatura latina. ¿Qué significa ser bilingüe? ¿Cómo funciona un bilingüismo literario? Y por lo tanto, se toma en cuenta la relación entre un idioma y el poder. ¿Cómo subvierte un escritor minoritario el dominio de un idioma imperial, como el inglés o el español, al momento de escribir? Y por último, ¿qué hace que la literatura latina como literatura menor, en el sentido que le dan Deleuze y Guattari a esta palabra, sea una literatura revolucionaria?