Latina Literature Research Articles

Beyond the Latina Boom: New Directions within the Field of US Latina Literature

This article aims to identify a lesser-known generation of female writers that has given a new direction to US Latina literature in the twenty-first century. Beyond the significance of the Latina boom that marked the 1980s and 1990s, the latest generation differs from their predecessors in important ways, amounting to a paradigm shift in US Latina literature that needs to be thoroughly explored. To carry out this task, I have selected three canonical Latina boom novels: Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street (1984), Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) and Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban (1992). These texts will be contrasted with Angie Cruz’s Soledad (2001), Achy Obejas’s Days of Awe (2001) and Felicia Luna Lemus’s Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties (2004). My contention is that while the US Latina literary boom might have sought synthesis or the creation of a third space, associated with Gloria Anzaldua’s consciousness of the borderlands , these twenty-first century female writers offer representations of nonnormative sexualities that take indeterminacy and ambiguity to a limit that defies all resolution. Keywords: US Latina literature; Latina boom; borderlands; new generation; nonnormative sexualities

Mapping South American Latina(o) Literature in the United States: Interviews with Contemporary Writers by Juanita Heredia

Mapping South American Latina(o) Literature in the United States: Interviews with Contemporary Writers by Juanita Heredia

Cultural Citizenship and Agency in the Genre of Chica Lit and Sofia Quintero’s Feminist Intervention

What does it mean to claim one’s cultural belonging as a Latina citizen living in the United States? Cultural citizenship accounts for the space between legal and political citizenship: the affective and everyday experience of living within and belonging to a nation state. Latina chick lit, also known as “chica lit,” offers a rewarding site for the study of US cultural belonging. This relatively recent genre, inaugurated in 2003 with Alisa Valdes’s (previously Valdes-Rodriguez) The Dirty Girls Social Club, reflects the culturally blended experiences of US Latinas. Furthermore, the depictions of Latina cultural citizenship found in chica lit contrast sharply with earlier portrayals found in Latina literature published from the 1970s to 1990s. This newer genre, unlike many of these earlier literary works, features characters that often fit seamlessly into US culture. Very little happens in either their lives or in the world around them that disrupts their sense of belonging to, and within, US culture; the Latina characters in these novels seem to possess full cultural citizenship. As comforting as these depictions of Latina protagonists who have achieved full cultural acceptance might be, the “seamless fit” that these characters experience is actually a warped representation of cultural belonging, one that falsely assures readers that Latinidad has been fully incorporated into the US cultural imaginary. This distortion results from these novels’ shared neoliberal conception of agency that centers on individual action and success. However, one novel, Sofia Quintero’s Divas Don’t Yield (2006), presents new forms of Latina identity similar to that found in other chica lit but, unlike its generic siblings, self-consciously offers a corrective to the representations of full cultural belonging found in much of chica lit. Most chica-lit novels, regardless of category, share an ethos of individual empowerment, a quality that creates a false sense of full belonging. Reading Quintero’s novel against other chica lit illustrates how Divas Don’t Yield disrupts the genre’s depiction of neoliberal empowerment by skewing the chick-lit formula as feminist. As a result of adopting feminist beliefs, Quintero’s protagonists understand their position within US class and racial hierarchies and recognize the ways that US cultural and social forces constrain their agency and produce for them an incomplete and partial cultural citizenship.

Identity in Latin American and Latina literature: the struggle to self-define in a global era where space, capitalism, and power rule

Identity in Latin American and Latina literature: the struggle to self-define in a global era where space, capitalism, and power rule

Troubling nationhood in US Latina literature: Explorations of place and belonging by Maya Socolovsky

Troubling nationhood in US Latina literature: Explorations of place and belonging by Maya Socolovsky

Troubling Nationhood in US Latina Literature: Explorations of Place and Belonging by Maya Socolovsky (review)

Reviewed by: Troubling Nationhood in US Latina Literature: Explorations of Place and Belonging by Maya Socolovsky Elena Errico Socolovsky, Maya . Troubling Nationhood in US Latina Literature: Explorations of Place and Belonging. New Brunswick : Rutgers UP , 2013 . Pp. 256 . ISBN 978-0-8135-6119-6 . El libro de Maya Socolovsky Troubling Nationhood in US Latina Literature: Explorations of Place and Belonging presenta una lectura innovadora sobre cómo algunas escritoras latinas interpretan en su labor literaria los conceptos de nación, dislocación, identidad y mestizaje. En concreto, la autora muestra con argumentos sólidos y convincentes que las narrativas de las autoras analizadas suponen un auténtico acto de resistencia ante la marginación de las comunidades latinas en los Estados Unidos y una reivindicación de su derecho a disfrutar de ciudadanía plena en el país. El hilo conductor que une dichos textos es el cuestionamiento de la idea de discontinuidad entre los Estados Unidos y América Latina, fundamentada en la noción tradicional de estado-nación [End Page 699] concebido como entidad distinta y separada geográfica y culturalmente de los estados vecinos. La alternativa que imaginan las escritoras estudiadas es un espacio transnacional incluyente y compartido donde Estados Unidos y América Latina coexistan y se imbriquen, legitimando plenamente la presencia latina en el país. En el primero de los cinco capítulos en que se divide la obra, el análisis de The Last of the Menu Girls y Face of an Angel, de Denise Chávez, identifica la enfermedad como eje de la narrativa tanto en el plano literal como en el metafórico: es a la vez una condición física y el efecto de la colonización que ha cortado el lazo ancestral entre Nuevo México y México (sin olvidar, por otra parte, que en mucha de la retórica popular estadounidense sobre la inmigración, la presencia de los indocumentados también se percibe como una herida en el cuerpo de la nación). Para los méxico-americanos, el suroeste de los Estados Unidos representa un espacio de incomodidad y trastorno, debido a su separación artificial de México. Esta condición de desplazamiento se supera imaginando una continuidad geográfica e identitaria con México, una conexión que, por cierto, nunca se ha perdido del todo gracias a la porosidad de la frontera. En el segundo capítulo, la lectura crítica de Sapogonia de Ana Castillo y Caramelo de Sandra Cisneros amplía estas consideraciones desde la franja fronteriza hasta el Midwest. Sapogonia es un país cuyo carácter mestizo pone en entredicho las categorías definitorias de “nación” (por ejemplo, fronteras y etnicidad), así como la idea de una latinidad entendida como conjunto monolítico. Cisneros va incluso más allá de esto, al revalorizar la ascendencia india de sus personajes y mostrar cómo la construcción de la raza en los Estados Unidos adolece de la perspectiva eurocéntrica heredada del discurso sobre la etnicidad que se ha llevado a cabo históricamente en México y que sigue vigente. En Caramelo, la protagonista experimenta no solo los Estados Unidos, sino también el propio México a través de su conciencia mestiza, suspendida entre dos mundos. De ahí que narre unas memorias del país de origen a veces distantes y fictivas. Los capítulos 3 y 4 están dedicados a dos escritoras de origen puertorriqueño, respectivamente Judith Ortiz Cofer (The Line of the Sun y The Meaning of Consuelo) y Esmeralda Santiago (When I was Puerto Rican, Almost a Woman y The Turkish Lover). Según argumenta Socolovsky, estas obras ponen de manifiesto que los puertorriqueños se siguen considerando ciudadanos de segunda clase, pese a que su presencia en el territorio continental de Estados Unidos es legal. Esta condición de discriminación se debe a los lazos neocoloniales entre los dos países, que sitúan a Puerto Rico en una posición de patente subalternidad. La situación sigue generando corrientes migratorias internas que perpetúan un desplazamiento geográfico y cultural no solamente hacia el...

Troubling Nationhood in U.S Latina Literature: Explorations of Place and Belonging MayaSocolovsky. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013.

Troubling Nationhood in U.S Latina Literature: Explorations of Place and Belonging Maya Socolovsky. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013.During 1990s and 2000s US Latinas produced a surge of literary narratives that explore intersection of place and identity within reimagined borders. In Troubling Nationhood in U.S. Latina Literature, Maya Socolovsky analyzes texts of six feminist Latina writers, writing from liminal zones, whose narratives act as sites of cultural resistance against xenophobic US rhetoric of nationhood which positions Latinos/as as outsiders. Socolovsky argues that Latino/a literary narratives imagine collective geographical, political, and cultural presence, where Latina America becomes part of, not apart from, political and national identity of United States (3). These texts reconceptualize Latina identity through a rhetoric of belonging-one that challenges hegemonic US national identification which defines porous national and cultural borders between US and Latin America as an insidious threat to US cultural and political identity while it simultaneously ignores West's history of hemispheric transnationalism and Latino/s presence in United States. In her literary and rhetorical analysis, Socolovsky urges textual readings that reveal process whereby geographical landscapes, cultural practices, and narrative spaces all become intersecting aspects of national identification and experience (5).Taking into consideration panethnic commonalities, Socolovsky divides her book in various ways to promote a remapping of Americas: through geopolitical histories of national-origin groups (Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American), geographic regions (Southwest, Midwest, Puerto Rican and Cuban island and mainland experiences), and racial identities (Native American, African, and mestizaje). Rooted in Borderland and Hispanic Studies, Socolovsky's study emphasizes interconnectedness of regional landscape and women's sense of survival and maintains that the literature creates, suggests, or reveals radical social change (6). Through storytelling, writers of US Latina boom expose physical and psychological trauma of 'othering' while asserting their belonging to/in same nation that denies them agency and autonomy.Socolovsky begins with Denise Chavez's portrayal of female body as site of cultural ills in The Last of Menu Girls (1986) and Face of an Angel (1994). In these texts, generations of abuse represent (and are a consequence of) violent national histories in Southwestern region of US. Chavez provides a metaphor for cultural healing in her portrayal of Latinas overcoming familial and institutional cruelty, specifically through writing process, while redefining American to include indigenous identities of Americas. …

Troubling Nationhood in U.S. Latina Literature: Explorations of Place and Belonging by Maya Socolovsky (review)

TROUBLING NATIONHOOD IN U.S. LATINA LITERATURE: Explorations of Place and Belonging. By Maya Socolovsky. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univer- sity Press. 2013.Maya Socolovsky's, Troubling Nationhood in U.S. Latina Literature: Explo - rations of Place and Belonging is an analysis of ten novels written by U.S. La- tina writers published between 1989 and 2004. The main purpose of Socolovsky's work is to demonstrate how a selected group of literary narratives remaps Latin America part of the United States through a bi-directional process of belonging and unbelonging to the nation. Central to her argument are the characters' personal blended narratives through which they reimagine themselves being part of the U.S. national identity well retain their own Latin American cultural heritage. These new identities disrupt the general perceptions of nationhood, generating a process of categorizing these new Latinos the other. Furthermore, Socolovsky argues that racialized notions of citizenship have recently changed to cultural rac- ism, which emphasizes cultural differences threatening the national identity of the United States.The introduction provides an overview of the text's principal argument; ex- plaining how recent literary works question the cultural and political hegemony of the United States, which began with the historical expansion of its territory, and reflected through the mentality of Manifest Destiny. The text builds on the research of prominent scholars including Edward Soja, Mary Pat Brady, Juan Flores, Jose David Saldivar, and Ilan Stavans. Socolovsky cites their research to help the reader understand the framework and analysis of her own work, a needed contextualization of the historical and political background of the selected literary works. Utilizing Denise Chavez's novels The Last of the Menu Girls (2004) and Face of an Angel (1994) the analysis of the first chapter focuses on the geographic landscape of the borderlands as a space of dislocation, unease, and (29). According to Socolovsky, the realities and experiences lived by the characters in a complex environment triggers symptoms of disease that can only be healed through the imaginary blurring and conjoining of Mexico and the United States' nation-spaces (29). While the first chapter establishes the borderlands a continuous contested space of belonging and unbelonging, the second chapter turns the lens to the literary work of Ana Castillo's Sopogonia (1994) and Sandra Cisneros' Caramelo (2002). In both novels, the analysis centers on the concept of mestizaje a way to challenge the geographic conceptions of nationhood and challenging representations of citizenship in the heartland of the United States. …

Troubling nationhood in U.S. Latina literature: explorations of place and belonging

Troubling nationhood in U.S. Latina literature: explorations of place and belonging

Fabric Frontiers: Thread, Cloth, Body, Self in Latina Literature and Film

This article examines the relationship between self-formation and clothing as a contact zone in Sandra Cisneros's "Eleven," Achy Obejas's "We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?" and Alicia Partnoy's "The Denim Jacket" as well as in the film El Norte and the documentary Señorita extraviada . Exploring the cultural conflicts that unfold on the surface of clothing, I contend that these literary and cinematic texts offer richly nuanced moments in which a character interacts with a garment to illuminate the complex relations between biological bodies and social contexts. In these texts, cloth operates both as a limen and as the creased and occasionally threadbare map of a life; whether to take a garment off, put it on, throw it away, or hold on to it becomes a matter of ethical significance, of practicing a particular kind of relationship to oneself.

Cristina García's Dreaming in Cuban: Latina literature and beyond?

This paper expands the discussion surrounding Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban by questioning the evaluations made by certain critics of the cultural identity of the text and its author. It examines briefly some definitions of Latina writing, and the ways in which the text conforms to these. However, the importance of Caribbean identity in Dreaming in Cuban is also asserted, and factors that highlight this are considered. The issue of style is then examined, especially in regard to postmodernism, magical realism and lo real maravilloso, and how these may link Garcia with a postcolonial migrant identity. The problematic aspects of the postcolonial migrant and postmodern classification are also discussed. In conclusion, this paper asserts that Garcia challenges some of the more homogenizing aspects of the Latina category and others to which the work could seem to belong. It posits that Dreaming in Cuban thus redefines not only the Latina, but also the Cuban-American label in reference to some critics' conceptualizations of these.

Postmodern Cross-culturalism and Politicization in U.S. Latina Literature: From Ana Castillo to Julia Alvarez

Postmodern Cross-culturalism and Politicization in U.S. Latina Literature: From Ana Castillo to Julia Alvarez

Multiple Articulations of Exile in US Latina Literature: Confronting Exilic Absence and Trauma

sudden dispossession accompanying refugee flight is much more than loss of permanent home and traditional occupation or than parting from close friends and familiar places. It is also death of person one has become in particular context, and every refugee must be his or her own midwife at painful process of rebirth. Dervla Murphy frequent theme of exile in US Latina literature is framed within social and geopolitical reality of Latin America. Narratives of displacement and exile discussed in this article specifically focus on Central American and Caribbean experience determined by conditions of military regimes and authoritarianism in second half of twentieth century. Forced flee severe political repression and state violence in their homelands, Central American and Caribbean civilians came US mainly as political refugees, participating in massive population uprooting. In only three decades, from 1950-1983, almost two million people were forced relocate: approximately 900,000 Cubans; 300,000 Dominicans; 200,000 Nicaraguans; 300,000 Salvadorans; and 200,000 Guatemalans came US as documented and undocumented refugees (Pastor 300). effect of such massive relocations are typically experienced as psychological rupture that inevitably problematizes articulation of individual and collective subjectivity. As Edward Said notes, rift between human being and native often results in an alienation from self (173). This absence of strong grounding provokes feelings of uprootedness and nonbelonging, endangering one's personal sense of being and propelling one into perpetual solitude and nostalgia. inability find stable and complete meaning provokes crisis of self, fragmented subjectivity placed in continuous state of lack. Denied home and integrity in both homeland and immigrant location, exiles become confined space of absence and loss, or Said calls a perilous territory of not-belonging (177). In her analysis of Latin American women's writing in exile, Reading Body Politic (1993), Amy Kaminsky theorizes exile as particular form of presence-in-absence. She emphasizes its spatial configuration, pointing out that exile is primarily from, and not to, place (30). As physical topicality constituted by departure, exile is defined by what is missing, not by it contains, and its conditions of loss and emptiness foster a will return into (32). Desire reclaim presence is manifested, Kaminsky states, in perpetual longing, nostalgia, wish return, and fear of return where one can no longer be. Consequently, exile is experienced as dislocation, both physical and psychic. On other hand, exile may also offer liberating possibilities. Kaminsky notes that experience of physical and emotional rupture can lead personal growth and transformation. Through discovery of an inner capacity to survive and grow in new environment (37), one may find greater independence and confidence and thus gain more fulfilling self-affirmation and realization. Kaminsky compares this act of self-discovery rebirth, an emergence of new personhood and subjectivity. As epigraph this article states, exilic rebirth is inevitably connected death, the death of person one has become in particular context. Evidently, this individual liberation or, in Murphy's words, the painful process of rebirth--is attained in traumatic circumstances, but this is precisely why its meaning is so powerful and valuable. This article focuses on depiction of exile in three Latina texts--Helena Maria Viramontes' The Cariboo Cafe, Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban, and Julia Alvarez's How Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents--in an attempt investigate different articulations of exilic condition. …

"Cold/Hot, English/Spanish": The Puerto Rican American Divide in Judith Ortiz Cofer's "Silent Dancing"

On more than one occasion Rican American writer Judith Ortiz Cofer has been questioned about her use of standard American English to express the bicultural experiences of the immigrant Ricans featured in her poetry and prose fiction. The suggestion that her linguistic selection renders suspect her ethnic identity as well as the authenticity of her literary accounts is never far from the surface of such inquiries. Ortiz Cofer's response, however, has been consistently unapologetic. In a recent interview conducted by Rafael Ocasio, she speaks forcefully about the varied and ever changing character of the Rican experience (Infinite Variety 735), asserting, want my work to be recognized as coming out of the Rican tradition, even though it (734). An earlier interview reports her theorizing even more plainly on the subject: There is not just one reality to being a Rican writer. I am putting together a different view (Ocasio, Puerto Rican Literature 45). Ortiz Cofer's response is significant not only because it rejects facile definitions of cultural identity, definitions based almost exclusively on linguistic proficiency, but more importantly, because it challenges writers and scholars to adopt a more nuanced approach in their investigation of Latin peoples. As Eliana Ortega and Nancy Saporta Sternbach argue in their essay on contemporary Latina literature, it is incumbent upon those in the field of Latin American studies to consider more carefully the ways in which race, class, gender, linguistic affinity, and other social and material circumstances contribute to a more complex, more diversified account of what it means to be a person of Latin origin (7-8). Such is the defining issue at stake not only in Ortiz Cofer's status as an English-dominant Latina writer, (1) but a defining issue at stake in much of her work as well, most notably in her cross-genre autobiography entitled Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Rican Childhood. In addition to being a text that affirms the cultural ethos of an author who sounds from her Spanish-speaking contemporaries, Silent Dancing breaks ground in Latino/a literature by speaking specifically about the bicultural experience of Rican Americans, and by demonstrating the way in which this experience is fundamentally distinct from that found in Chicano/a literature. The purpose of this paper is to chart the nature and source of these differences. In particular, I borrow from Gloria Anzaldua's theories of border identity to argue that the cultural reality encountered by the characters in Silent Dancing is neither random nor monolithically shared, but one that is shaped instead by the unique physical reality that divides these characters from their homeland. Unlike the US Texas-Mexican border which functions prominently in the formation of what Anzaldua calls the new mestiza of Mexican Americans, the Rican American border is not a land formation, and hence it has an entirely different psychic impact on those who traverse it. This notion is one of the most compelling insights of Ortiz Cofer's work. Silent Dancing thus not only troubles the indiscriminate application of Anzaldua's mestiza consciousness to all border culture Latino/as, but, in a much broader sense, it troubles the conclusions of any cultural analysis that would deny the infinite variety of the Latino/a experience. As complex as Silent Dancing is in its alternating combination of poetry and creative nonfiction essay, (2) the story itself is simple: Ortiz Cofer narrates the events of her childhood in a series of chronologically-ordered vignettes that detail her experience as a young girl shuttled back and forth between her grandmother's casa in a small Rican village and her family's American home in Paterson, New Jersey. Ortiz Cofer's father works in the Navy shipyards of Brooklyn Yard, a job that requires him to take leave of his family for months at a time. …

“What Doesn’t Kill You, Makes You Fat”: The Language of Food in Latina Literature

“What Doesn’t Kill You, Makes You Fat”: The Language of Food in Latina Literature

Mujeres Latinas--Santas y Marquesas.

This presidential address is a conceptualization and application of psychohistorical and mestizo psychology frameworks to address gender and ethnic identity conflicts for contemporary Latinas. Connections are made between historical and cultural icons and Latina literature of the 21st century with protagonists who give voice to the struggles of acculturated and self-empowered women. Spanish terms are used to communicate and give emphasis to the Latino landscape. The article comes to conclusion with personal reflections about María Morales de Zaldívar, or Mamá, the author's grandmother, who embodies the santa y marquesa life script.

Latina Self-Portraits: Interviews with Contemporary Women Writers

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 Chavez, Sandra Cisneros, Rosario Ferre, Cristina Garcia, Nicholasa Mohr, Cherrie Moraga, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Esmeralda Santiago, and Helena Maria 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.

When Jerry Springer Visits Your Classroom: Teaching Latina Literature in a Contested Ground

When Jerry Springer Visits Your Classroom: Teaching Latina Literature in a Contested Ground

The Hispanic Absence in the North American Literary Canon

I recently completed a book of interviews (Latina Self-Portraits: Interviews with Contemporary Women Writers, co-edited with Juanita Heredia, University of New Mexico Press, 2000) with ten of the most prominent Latina writers in the US; Julia Alvarez, Denise Chávez, Sandra Cisneros, Rosario Ferré, Cristina García, Nicholasa Mohr, Cherríe Moraga, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Esmeralda Santiago and Helena María Viramontes. These women, Cuban, Dominican, Mexican and Puerto Rican Americans, raised issues that ranged from the craft of writing to the inherent problems of national identities. The themes generated in our conversations with these women – their doubled ethnic identities, their complicated relationship to their communities, their difficulties in representing their communities and, finally, their work as part of the larger American canon – revealed a powerful discourse about what it means to be Latina American in the United States. After spending two years talking with these women, it is evident to me that Latina literature is a vital part of American literature and should be included in any study of comparative American literatures.

Promoting Adolescent Voice Through Latina Fiction

The voices of adolescent girls are often lost around the time they reach the middle school classroom. This paper reflects my experience in incorporating Latina literature into a curriculum that speaks to this disaffected group. Focusing on the reactions of three students, I examine the potential for this literature to change the nature of the middle school experience, especially for girls. I found that an active approach to reading books such as Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street and Esmerelda Santiago's autobiography When I was Puerto Rican can promote increased confidence, visible through candid writing.