On Latinidad
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A01=Marta Caminero-Santangelo
Author_Marta Caminero-Santangelo
Category=DSBH
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Product details
- ISBN 9780813030838
- Weight: 555g
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 30 Sep 2007
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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This is the first book to address head-on the question of how Latino/a literature wrestles with the pan-ethnic and trans-racial implications of the ""Latino"" label. Refusing to take latinidad (Latino-ness) for granted, Marta Caminero-Santangelo lays the groundwork for a sophisticated understanding of the various manifestations of ""Latino"" identity. She examines texts by prominent Chicano/a, Dominican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American writers - including Julia Alvarez, Cristina Garcia, Achy Obejas, Piri Thomas, and Ana Castillo - and concludes that a pre-existing ""group"" does not exist. The author instead argues that much recent Latino/a literature presents a vision of tentative, forged solidarities in the service of particular and sometimes even local struggles. She shows that even magical realism can figure as a threat to collectivity, rather than as a signifier of it, because magical connections - to nature, between characters, and to Latin American origins - can undermine efforts at solidarity and empowerment. In the author's close reading of both fictional and cultural narratives, she suggests the possibility that Latino identity may be even more elastic than the authors under question recognize.
Marta Caminero-Santangelo, associate professor of English at the University of Kansas, is the author of The Madwoman Can't Speak: Or Why Insanity Is Not Subversive.
