Contemporary U.S. Latino/ A Literary Criticism

LYN DI IORIO SANDIN is Assistant Professor at the City College of New York, USA.RICHARD PEREZ is an ABD doctoral candidate at CUNY Graduate Center, USA.

• New Waves in U.S. Latino/a Literary Criticism - L.Di Iorio Sandín & R.Perez PART I: ARCHIVES, HISTORY, AND GENEALOGIES The Once and Future Latino: Notes Toward a Literary History todavía para llegar - K. Silva Gruesz Latino U.S. Literature: A Bridge Between Two Centuries, Two Regions, and Two Cultures in Cristina García's The Agüero Sisters - W.Luis Out of the Margins: The 'Lost Generation' Writes Back - A.O'Reilly Herrera PART II: PRODUCTIONS OF SPACE, LABOR, AND THE LITERARY Oscar Hijuelos: Writer of Work - R.Lazo Mass Production of the Heartland: Cuban American Lesbian Camp in Achy Obejas's "Wrecks" - M.DeGuzman PART III: AFRO-LATINO/A POETICS Spirited Identities: Creole Religions, Ceole/U.S. Latina Literature, and the Initiated Reader - M.Fernández Olmos Reading the Disfigured Face: Exteriorizing Blackness and Re/inscribing Latino Masculinity in Piri Thomas' Down These Mean Streets and Junot Díaz's Drown - R.Perez Revisions of Ekphrasis and the Souvenir Collectible in Nelly Rosario's Song of the Water Saints - V.Chevalier-Brooks PART IV: LATINO/A AFFECT As yet untitled essay - R.de la Campa Hystory and Literary Representation of the Puerto Rican Syndrome - L.Di Iorio Sandín St. Miguelito: The Oulaw Poetic of Miguel Piñero - F.Negrón Muntaner

"This collection brings together an impressive group of established and young scholars to produce a multi-layered, theoretically complex approach to the practices of Latino/a criticism. These essays continue the dialogue about ambivalent identities and the usefulness (or lack thereof) of contemporary literary theory in helping scholars tease out the meaning of Latino/a texts. It should prove a valuable and popular text for scholars and students of Latino/a literature." - Lisa Paravisini, Vassar College"Welcome to 21st century literary criticism of the Americas, where the foreign is domestic, the strange familiar, and the presumed outsider is the ultimate insider. Free from the idea that Latino/a literature's work is identity politics, Contemporary US Latino/a Literary Criticism takes the path less taken and asks how does this literature offers alternative ways of understanding today's world. In contrast to most writing on the subject, this collection is also not about how Latinos are becoming Americans. Rather, it's about how the people of the United States are becoming Americans in a whole different way." - Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Professor of English and Latino Studies, Columbia University