On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity

by Marta Caminero-Santangelo

Overview

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 García, 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813034485
Publisher:	University Press of Florida
Publication date:	07/25/2009
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Marta Caminero-Santangelo is associate professor of English at the University of Kansas.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction: Who Are We?     1
Race and Ethnicity
"Jason's Indian": Mexican Americans and the Denial of Indigenous Ethnicity in Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima     39
"Puerto Rican Negro": Defining Race in Piri Thomas's Down These Mean Streets     51
Complicating the Origins
Speaking for Others: Problems of Representation in the Writing of Julia Alvarez     73
Complicating Cubanidad: Novels of Achy Obejas and Cristina Garcia     93
Difference and the Possibilities of Panethnicity
"The Pleas of the Desperate": Magical Realism, Latinidad, and (or) Collective Agency in Ana Castillo's So Far from God     139
Dirty Girls, German Shepherds, and Puerto Rican Independentistas: "The Latino Imaginary" and the Case of Cuba     161
Imagining Identity/Seeing Difference: Demetria Martinez's Mother Tongue     196
Conclusion: The Shifting Nature of Latinidad     213
Notes     221
Works Cited     265
Index     285