Literary Criticism / American / Hispanic American

A Literary Exploration of Chicana Coming of Age, Identity, and Belonging

Essays that Demonstrate the Theoretical Capacity of Castillo’s Work and the Connections We Can Make through Literature to Larger Cultural, Political, and Global Concerns

A Collection of Essays that Cast a Light on Giannina Braschi’s Exquisite, Experimental, and Genre and Gender Bending Work

A Study of the Work of Ilan Stavans

A new reading of U.S. Latinx literature in translation.

How literature challenges the historical methodologies that have silenced the American experience of Puerto Rican women.

The first major study of the life and work of Dominican-born bilingual American poet and translator Rhina P. Espaillat (b. 1932). The authors define Espaillat’s place in American letters with attention to her formalist aesthetics, Hispanic Caribbean immigrant background, poetic community-building, bilingual ethos, and domestically-minded woman-of-color feminism.

This is a collection of conversations with more than thirty Latina/o authors of literature for young people. Aldama provides an introduction and serves as the interviewer for each author. The conversations revolve around the idea of Latina/o identity and what that means for authors of books for children and young adults. They also talk extensively about their experiences within the publishing industry and about their audiences. There is not a lot of scholarship in the volume, but it allows Latina/o writers of children’s and young adult literature to speak for themselves.

A critical examination of the work of Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Mexican-American brothers whose graphic novels are highly influential The brothers started in the alt-comics scene, where their ‘Love and Rockets’ series gained prominence. Their depictions of latinidad and sexuality push against the edicts of mainstream Anglophone culture, but they also defy many Latino perceptions of life, politics, and self-representation.

Winner, 2016 ALA-Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Hedrick illuminates how discourses of Americanization, ethnicity, gender, class, and commodification shape the genre of “chica lit,” popular fiction written by Latina authors with Latina characters. Looking at chica lit’s market-driven representations of difference, poverty, and Americanization, Hedrick shows how this writing functions within the larger arena of struggles over popular representation of Latinas and Chicanas.