The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina and Latino Literature

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.1093/acref/9780190624316.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Keyword(s):

American Literature ◽

Latin American ◽

Literary History ◽

Graphic Novels ◽

Contact Period ◽

Cultural Significance ◽

Field Of Study ◽

Latino Literature ◽

Successive Generations

Latina/o literature is a growing field of study. It is both an emerging literature and a rich historical one that continues to be documented and uncovered in archival and personal collections. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina and Latino Literature offers a sweeping introduction to a variety of genres and themes in Latina/o literature from its Latin American origins in the precolonial period to contemporary texts and perspectives. The collection illustrates the historical, social, and political contexts in which successive generations of Latina and Latino authors have written, exploring the interrelationship between geography, national origin, race, gender, sexuality, and other cultural and ethnic identities. Led by Editor in Chief Louis G. Mendoza and an editorial board of experts, this collection throws light not only on how Latina/o texts have evolved since the contact period, but also on how we have come to understand and conceptualize this work over the past three generations. From Chicana/o identity to Caribbean and Central American diasporic literature, from key figures in Latina/o letters to bilingual texts and graphic novels, the collection explores a variety of issues that are central to the 21st century's American experience, such as feminism, LGBTQA groups, indigeneity, environmental justice, social movements, migration, and US-Mexico borderlands. Each article paints a nuanced and in-depth portrait of Latina/o literary history in a dynamic, complex, and deeply engaging field of study that is at once highly popular, historical, and theoretical. One of the most extensive and detailed surveys of Latina/o literature to date, this encyclopedia shows the historical and cultural significance of this literary tradition in the American context, challenging readers to revisit conventional literary notions and expand the borders of American literature.

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Transvestism, Masculinity, and Latin American Literature

10.1057/9780230107281 ◽

2002 ◽

Cited By ~ 34

Author(s):

Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui

Keyword(s):

American Literature ◽

Latin American ◽

Latin American Literature

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Surrealism in Latin American Literature

10.1057/9781137317612 ◽

2013 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Melanie Nicholson

Keyword(s):

American Literature ◽

Latin American ◽

Latin American Literature

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Uncommon Grounds

10.1093/oso/9780190690205.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jeffrey Lawrence

Keyword(s):

American Literature ◽

Latin American ◽

Historical Novel ◽

Latin American Literature ◽

Historical Account ◽

American Novel ◽

Song Of Solomon ◽

The Past ◽

The North ◽

The Us

This chapter turns from a historical account of the development of the US literature of experience and the Latin American literature of reading to a textual analysis of the US and Latin American historical novel. Hemispheric/inter-American scholars often cite William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) as exemplifying instances of literary borrowing across the North–South divide. As I demonstrate, however, each of the later texts also realigns its predecessor’s historical imaginary according to the dominant logics of the US and Latin American literary fields. Whereas the American works foreground experiential models of reconstructing the past and conveying knowledge across generations, García Márquez’s Latin American novel presents reading as the fundamental mode of comprehending and transmitting history.

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Anxieties of Experience

10.1093/oso/9780190690205.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jeffrey Lawrence

Keyword(s):

American Literature ◽

Latin American ◽

World Literature ◽

Latin American Literature ◽

First Century ◽

Comparative Approach ◽

Leaves Of Grass ◽

Literary Authority ◽

The Us ◽

New Interpretation

Anxieties of Experience: The Literatures of the Americas from Whitman to Bolaño offers a new interpretation of US and Latin American literature from the nineteenth century to the present. Revisiting longstanding debates in the hemisphere about whether the source of authority for New World literature derives from an author’s first-hand contact with American places and peoples or from a creative (mis)reading of existing traditions, the book charts a widening gap in how modern US and Latin American writers defined their literary authority. In the process, it traces the development of two distinct literary strains in the Americas: the “US literature of experience” and the “Latin American literature of the reader.” Reinterpreting a range of canonical works from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, Anxieties of Experience shows how this hemispheric literary divide fueled a series of anxieties, misunderstandings, and “misencounters” between US and Latin American authors. In the wake of recent calls to rethink the “common grounds” approach to literature across the Americas, the book advocates a comparative approach that highlights the distinct logics of production and legitimation in the US and Latin American literary fields. Anxieties of Experience closes by exploring the convergence of the literature of experience and the literature of the reader in the first decades of the twenty-first century, arguing that the post-Bolaño moment has produced the strongest signs of a truly reciprocal literature of the Americas in more than a hundred years.

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