What Was Latino Literature?

Abstract

My substitution in the hoary formulation what was x? must seem perverse. isn't latino literature in the united states a newcomer among subfields—a recent entry on the roster of MLA book prizes, a fast-growing site of knowledge production, faculty lines, and institutional visibility? How could that field of the future—propelled by a demographic surge—be already a thing of the past? It is to worry this commonsensical temporality of Latino issues that I invoke the title of Kenneth Warren's What Was African American Literature?, published in early 2011. In a neat coincidence, Warren's book was published in the same season as the first-ever Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (NALL), a project spearheaded by Ilan Stavans with the collaboration of five editors. Both publishing events sparked discussion beyond the academy among the shrinking general audience interested in literary culture; taken together, they illustrate the peculiar exigencies of periodizing ethnic literatures.