Latina Writers

This collection of essays on Latin American women's writing--written by the leading feminist critics in Latin America, the United States, and Europe--rethinks notions of gender and cultural identity and examines the specific discursive practices of a range of female-authored texts. The contributors offer fresh readings of canonical authors, such as Maria Luisa Bombal and Rosario Castellanos, and present essays on emerging Latin American, Caribbean, and Latina writers. The collection represents the most influential strands in current feminist criticism on Latin America, including psychoanalytic, post-structuralist, and Marxist approaches, with their diverse post-colonial and philosophical inflections.

What makes John Rechy a Chicano writer? To be Latino, must writing have a touch of 'magical realism'? Can one talk of US Latina/o identity, considering the diversity of the Latina/o experience? Through the analysis of nine recent Latino/a novels, Karen Christian answers these and other questions, thereby adding a fresh, bold voice to the anti-essentialist debate surrounding ethnic and gender identity. Christian melds the theory of 'performativity' with the latest scholarship on ethnicity and ethnic literature to create a framework for viewing identity as a continuous process that cannot be reduced to static categories. Through their narrative 'performances', US Latina/o writers and their characters move among communities and identities in an ongoing challenge to the notion of Latina/o essence. This study is also among the first to examine trends across the spectrum of cultures represented in US Latina/o literature -- from Chicano to Cuban to Puerto Rican to Dominican. This book is essential for any serious student of Latina/o literature and identity.

Latina writers are often sensitive to the discrimination faced by Latinos and Latinas in the United States. Latinas are additionally oppressed because of their gender--because they are women, they hold a subordinate position in Latino culture. This book gives special attention to the role of female cultural "gatekeepers" in novels by contemporary Latina writers. These gatekeepers enforce and perpetuate patriarchal cultural constraints onto future generations of Latinas. The book begins by examining Judith Ortiz Cofer's Silent Dancing, a work which clearly illustrates the role of gatekeepers in perpetuating gendered power relations. It then turns to the works of Christina Garcia, Julia Alvarez, Rosario Ferre, and Magali Garcia Ramis.

Embracing Chicana, Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican writers and writers descended from a combined US and Latin American heritage, Latina literature is one of the fastest growing and most exciting fields in fiction. This literature is characterised by revisionist views of recent history, a concern with exile and borders, a blending of genres, and a complex understanding of the term feminist. In these ten interviews, Kevane and Heredia give writers the opportunity to talk about how they began to write, the craft of writing, the conjunction of life, art and politics, literary influences, and their goals as artists. Readers will meet Julia Alvarez, Denise Chávez, Sandra Cisneros, Rosario Ferré, Cristina García, Nicholasa Mohr, Cherríe Moraga, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Esmeralda Santiago, and Helena María Viramontes. The writers' personal and literary journeys vividly portrayed in these interviews will enrich and enhance the readers' understanding of this exciting field. The volume also includes bibliographies of the writers' work.

In the past ten years, literature by U.S. Latinos has gained an extraordinary public currency and has engendered a great deal of interest among educators. Because of the increase in numbers of Latinos in their classrooms, teachers have recognized the benefits of including works by such important writers as Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, and Rudolfo Anaya in the curriculum. Without a guide, introducing courses on U.S. Latino literature or integrating individual works into the general courses on American Literature can be difficult for the uninitiated. While some critical sources for students and teachers are available, none are dedicated exclusively to this important body of writing. To fill the gap, the editors of this volume commissioned prominent scholars in the field to write 18 essays that focus on using U.S. Latino literature in the classroom. The selection of the subject texts was developed in conjunction with secondary school teachers who took part in the editors' course. This resultant volume focuses on major works that are appropriate for high school and undergraduate study including Judith Ortiz Cofer's The Latin Deli, Piri Thomas' Down These Mean Streets, and Cisneros' The House on Mango Street.