LIT CRIT

La Malinche in Mexican Literature

Of all the historical characters known from the time of the Spanish conquest of the New World, none has proved more pervasive or controversial than that of the Indian interpreter, guide, mistress, and confidante of Hernán Cortés, Doña Marina—La Malinche—Malintzin. The mother of Cortés's son, she becomes not only the mother of the mestizo but also the Mexican Eve, the symbol of national betrayal. Very little documented evidence is available about Doña Marina. This is the first serious study tracing La Malinche in texts from the conquest period to the present day. It is also the first study to delineate the transformation of this historical figure into a literary sign with multiple manifestations. Cypess includes such seldom analyzed texts as Ireneo Paz's Amor y suplicio and Doña Marina, as well as new readings of well-known texts like Octavio Paz's El laberinto de la soledad. Using a feminist perspective, she convincingly demonstrates how the literary depiction and presentation of La Malinche is tied to the political agenda of the moment. She also shows how the symbol of La Malinche has changed over time through the impact of sociopolitical events on the literary expression.

Latin American Literary Review

Vol. 15, No. 29, Jan. - Jun., 1987The Boom in Retrospect: A Reconsideration

Latinx Literature Unbound: Undoing Ethnic Expectation

Since the 1990s, there has been unparalleled growth in the literary output from an ever more diverse group of Latinx writers. Extant criticism, however, has yet to catch up with the diversity of writers we label Latinx and the range of themes about which they write. Little sustained scholarly attention has been paid, moreover, to the very category under which we group this literature. Latinx Literature Unbound, thus, begins with a fundamental question "What does it mean to label a work of literature or an entire corpus of literature Latinx?" From this question others emerge: What does Latinx allow or predispose us to see, and what does it preclude us from seeing? If the grouping--which brings together a heterogeneous collection of people under a seemingly homogeneous label--tells us something meaningful, is there a poetics we can develop that would facilitate our analysis of this literature? In answering these questions, Latinx Literature Unbound frees Latinx literature from taken-for-granted critical assumptions about identity and theme. It argues that there may be more salubrious taxonomies than Latinx for organizing and analyzing this literature. Privileging the act of reading as a temporal, meaning-making event, Ralph E. Rodriguez argues that genre may be a more durable category for analyzing this literature and suggests new ways we might proceed with future studies of the writing we have come to identify as Latinx.

New Chicana-Chicano Writing, 1

Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1992. Paperback. xiv, 185p., first edition, very good. Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Luis Omar Salinas, Gary Soto, Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldúa, Francisco X. Alarcon, Pat Mora and many others.

New Chicana-Chicano Writing, 2

"This impressive collection augurs a bright future for Chicana/Chicano literature, and will be of interest to those who keep track of the wide diversity of American and world literature." Publishers Weekly "A sampling of typically captivating contemporary Chicano literature by established and emerging writers." El Puente. The Quarterly Newsletter of the Hispanic Culture Foundation

New Chicana/Chicano Writing, 3

This new volume continues to offer the cream of contemporary Chicano writing by both established authors and talented new voices. Included are excerpts from novels in progress by Joel Huerta and Stephen D. Gutiérrez.

New Latina Narrative

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, U.S. Latina writers have made a profound impact on American letters with fiction in both mainstream and regional venues. Following on the heels of this vibrant and growing body of work, New Latina Narrative offers the first in-depth synthesis and literary analysis of this transethnic genre. Focusing on the dynamic writing published in the 1980s and 1990s by Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban American, and Dominican American women, New Latina Narrative illustrates how these writers have redefined the concepts of multiculturalism and diversity in American society. As participants in both mainstream and grassroots forms of multiculturalism, these new Latina narrativists have created a feminine space within postmodern ethnicity, disrupting the idealistic veneer of diversity with which publishers often market this fiction. In this groundbreaking study, author Ellen McCracken opens the conventional boundaries of Latino/a literary criticism, incorporating elements of cultural studies theory and contemporary feminism. Emphasizing the diversity within new Latina narrative, McCracken discusses the works of more than two dozen writers, including Julia Alvarez, Denise Chavez, Sandra Cisneros, Cristina Garcia, Graciela Limon, Demetria Martínez, Pat Mora, Cherrie Moraga, Mary Helen Ponce, and Helena Mar’a Viramontes. She stresses such themes as the resignification of master narrative, the autobiographical self and collective identity, popular religiosity, subculture and transgression, and narrative harmony and dissonance. New Latina Narrative provides readers an enriched basis for reconceiving the overall Latino/a literary field and its relation to other contemporary literary and cultural trends. McCracken's original approach extends the Latina literary canon both the works to be studied and the issues to be examined resulting in a valuable work for all readers of women's studies, contemporary American literature, ethnic studies, communications, and sociology.

Perspectives in Mexican American Studies

Although Chicano scholarship has grown significantly, research on women of Mexican descent remains sparse. This issue of Perspectives is devoted to Mexican American women, and examines the reasons of the lack of published scholarship as well as new directions and paradigms for research. This compilation of articles and essays on Chicanas reflects the continuing effort to provide a corrective to the traditional works and models that have obscured the roles and experiences of women. Readers will find them thoughtful, instructive, and provocative. Contents Beyond Machismo, La Familia, and Ladies Auxiliaries: A Historiography of Mexican-Origin Women's Participation in Voluntary Associations and Politics in the United States, 1870-1990, by Cynthia E. Orozco Beyond the Adelita Image: Women Scholars in the National Association for Chicano Studies, 1972-1992, by Gilberto García "Faithful Hard-Working Mexican Hands": Mexicana Workers During the Great Depression, by Yolanda Chavez Leyva Midwestern Mexican American Women and the Struggle for Gender Equality: A Historical Overview, 1920s-1960s, by Richard Santill Cooperative Re/Weavings: Astistic Expression and the Economic Development in a Northern New Mexican Village, by Maria Ochoa Deconstructing the Corrido Hero: Caballero and Its Gendered Critique of Nationalist Discourse, by Maria Cotera The Rearguarders Thesis and Latina Elites: A Case Study, by Isidro D. Ortiz

Quixote: The Novel and the World

A groundbreaking cultural history of the most influential, most frequently translated, and most imitated novel in the world.The year 2015 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of the complete Don Quixote of La Mancha--an ageless masterpiece that has proven unusually fertile and endlessly adaptable. Flaubert was inspired to turn Emma Bovary into "a knight in skirts." Freud studied Quixote's psyche. Mark Twain was fascinated by it, as were Kafka, Picasso, Nabokov, Borges, and Orson Welles. The novel has spawned ballets and operas, poems and plays, movies and video games, and even shapes the identities of entire nations. Spain uses it as a sort of constitution and travel guide; and the Americas were conquered, then sought their independence, with the knight as a role model.In Quixote, Ilan Stavans, one of today's preeminent cultural commentators, explores these many manifestations. Training his eye on the tumultuous struggle between logic and dreams, he reveals the ways in which a work of literature is a living thing that influences and is influenced by the world around it.

Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage

Fifteen years of archival and critical work have been conducted under the auspices of the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project at the University of Houston. This ongoing and comprehensive program seeks to locate, identify, preserve, and disseminate the written culture of U.S. Latinos from the Spanish Colonial Period to contemporary times. In the sixth volume of the series, the authors explore key issues and challenges in this project, such as the issues of "place" or region in Hispanic intellectual production, nationalism and transnationalism, race and ethnicity, as well as methodological approaches to recovering the documentary heritage. Included are essays on religious writing, the construction of identity and nation, translation and the movement of books across borders, and women writers and revolutionary struggle.

The Cosmic Race / La Raza Cosmica

"The days of the pure whites, the victors of today, are as numbered as were the days of their predecessors. Having fulfilled their destiny of mechanizing the world, they themselves have set, without knowing it, the basis for the new period: The period of the fusion and the mixing of all peoples." -- from The Cosmic RaceIn this influential 1925 essay, presented here in Spanish and English, José Vasconcelos predicted the coming of a new age, the Aesthetic Era, in which joy, love, fantasy, and creativity would prevail over the rationalism he saw as dominating the present age. In this new age, marriages would no longer be dictated by necessity or convenience, but by love and beauty; ethnic obstacles, already in the process of being broken down, especially in Latin America, would disappear altogether, giving birth to a fully mixed race, a "cosmic race," in which all the better qualities of each race would persist by the natural selection of love. "This bilingual edition of The Cosmic Race by José Vasconcelos gives the reader a clear and concise introduction to contents that have caused much critical controversy. Didier T. Jaén places this essay in perspective, discussing theories relevant to Vasconcelos's thought... [and] also provides an historical context for Vasconcelos's evolving ideas." -- Hispania

Twentieth-Century Spanish American Fiction

Spanish American fiction became a world phenomenon in the twentieth century through multilanguage translations of such novels as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman, Octavio Paz's Labyrinth of Solitude, and Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits. Yet these "blockbusters" are only a tiny fraction of the total, rich outpouring of Spanish-language literature from Latin America. In this book, Naomi Lindstrom offers English-language readers a comprehensive survey of the century's literary production in Latin America (excluding Brazil). Discussing movements and trends, she places the famous masterworks in historical perspective and highlights authors and works that deserve a wider readership. Her study begins with Rodó's famous essay Ariel and ends with Rigoberta Menchú's 1992 achievement of the Nobel Prize. Her selection of works is designed to draw attention, whenever possible, to works that are available in good English translations. A special feature of the book is its treatment of the "postboom" period. In this important concluding section, Lindstrom discusses documentary narratives, the new interrelations between popular culture and literary writing, and underrepresented groups such as youth cultures, slum dwellers, gays and lesbians, and ethnic enclaves. Written in accessible, nonspecialized language, Twentieth-Century Spanish American Fiction will be equally useful for general readers as a broad overview of this vibrant literature and for scholars as a reliable reference work.

U.S. Latino Literature: An Essay and Annotated Bibliography

Latino literature/reference. From visions of a reclaimed Aztlan and Borinquen, to portrayals of daily life in rural migrant camps and inner-city barrios, to the multi-faceted perspectives of Latina feminists, US Latino literature has developed and flourished as a new sphere of cultural expression. "US Latino Literature: An Essay and Annotated Bibliography" focuses on the representative writers, the key works in poetry, fiction, and drama, the major trends, the pre-history, history, and possible future of US Latino literature and the people it represents. Marc Zimmerman presents a finely-researched, thought-provoking and cohesive essay, as well as the most concise bibliography of US Latino literature to date.

Page updated

Report abuse