Interlingual Literature, Tropicalization, and Bilanguaging

US Latina/o literature is shaped by the hierarchical relationship between Spanish and English in the United States. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, writers working in various genres have explored this linguistic relationship by representing the interaction between English and Spanish in their literary works. Within a broader context of bilingual literary creation, many Latina/o writers have innovated with Spanish and English in ways that trouble the boundaries between these languages and, by extension, their relationship. In response to these literary experimentations, scholars have developed a range of perspectives to analyze writing that cannot be fully described by the term bilingual. Juan Bruce-Novoa proposes the term interlingual to analyze texts that do not treat Spanish and English as separate, independent codes but rather place the languages in a state of relation that makes a purely monolingual reading impossible. Frances Aparicio approaches this writing through the framework of tropicalization, a term that signals both dominant US cultural stereotypes about Latina/os as well as subaltern responses to those stereotypes. While Bruce-Novoa generally focuses on texts that include a high volume of both Spanish and English, Aparicio highlights the work of Latina/o writers, like Sandra Cisneros, Gary Soto, and Helena María Viramontes, who work primarily or exclusively in English. Aparicio traces the presence of Spanish in seemingly monolingual works through strategies like the use of literal translation and the phonetic representation of accent in English dialogue. She analyzes these strategies as sources of linguistic tension and literary creativity that transform the experiences of both monolingual and bilingual readers. Walter Mignolo offers a third perspective on bilingual writing, approaching it through the framework of decolonial theory. Like Bruce-Novoa, Mignolo highlights the creative use of the space between distinct languages. He argues that writers, like Gloria Anzaldúa, who operate in this liminal space participate in an active process of social transformation by denouncing and re-imagining hierarchical, colonial relationships between languages and cultures. While Bruce-Novoa, Aparicio, and Mignolo offer distinct perspectives on Latina/o writing between languages, they share a recognition of creative work that moves beyond the mere coexistence of Spanish and English to create meaning in the messy interaction between languages. In doing so, these creative and critical writers challenge their audiences to new modes of reading literature as well as of imagining linguistic, cultural, and political relationships between English and Spanish.