William Luis

Offers insights on Latino Caribbean writers born or raised in the United States who are at the vanguard of a literary movement that has captured both critical and popular interest. In this groundbreaking study, William Luis analyzes the most salient and representative narrative and poetic works of the newest literary movement to emerge in Spanish American and U.S. literatures. The book is divided into three sections, each focused on representative Puerto Rican American, Cuban American, and Dominican American authors. Luis traces the writers' origins and influences from the nineteenth century to the present, focusing especially on the contemporary works of Oscar Hijuelos, Julia Alvarez, Cristina Garcia, and Piri Thomas, among others. While engaging in close readings of the texts, Luis places them in a broader social, historical, political, and racial perspective to expose the tension between text and context. As a group, Latino Caribbeans write an ethnic literature in English that is born of their struggle to forge an identity separate from both the influences of their parents' culture and those of the United States. For these writers, their parents' country of origin is a distant memory. They have developed a culture of resistance and a language that mediates between their parents' identity and the culture that they themselves live in. Latino Caribbeans are engaged in a metaphorical dance with Anglo Americans as the dominant culture. Just as that dance represents a coming together of separate influences to make a unique art form, so do both Hispanic and North American cultures combine to bring a new literature into being. This new body of literature helps us to understand not only the adjustments Latino Caribbean cultures have had to make within the larger U.S. environment but also how the dominant culture has been affected by their presence.

Latino Caribbean Literature Written in the United States

Dance Between Two Cultures

Cuba continues to loom large in U.S. consciousness and politics. Culture and Customs of Cuba is a much-needed resource that gives students and other readers an in-depth view of our important island neighbor. Luis, of Cuban descent, provides detailed, clear insight into the society, religions, customs, media, cinema, literature, performing arts, and art in the context of three interrelated periods in Cuban history: Colonial, the Republic, and Castros Revolution and beyond. The contributions of Cubans in exile are considered an inherent part of Cuban culture and Luis includes them as well.

Culture and Customs of Cuba

Julio Rodríguez-Luis

Culture as Text : Selected Essays from "Translating Latin America, an Interdisciplinary Conference on Culture as Text" : a SUNY Conversation in the Disciplines, April 19-21, 1990

Translating Latin America

In the nineteenth century, the Cuban economy rested on the twin pillars of sugar and slaves. Slavery was abolished in 1886, but, one hundred years later, Cuban authors were still writing antislavery narratives. William Luis explores this seeming paradox in his groundbreaking study Literary Bondage, asking why this literary genre has remained a viable means of expression. Applying Foucault's theory of counter-discourse to a vast body of antislavery literature, Luis shows how these narratives have always served to undermine the foundations of slavery, to protest the marginalized status of blacks in Cuban society, and to rewrite the canon of "acceptable" history and literature. He finds that emancipation did not end the need for such counter-discourse and reveals how the antislavery narrative continues to provide a forum for voices that have been silenced by the dominant culture. In addition to such well-known works as Cecilia Valdés, The Kingdom of This World, and The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, Luis draws on many literary works outside the familiar canon, including Romualdo, uno de tantos, Aponte, Sofía La familia Unzúazu, El negrero, and Los guerrilleros negros. This comprehensive coverage raises important questions about the process of canon-formation and brings to light Cuba's rich heritage of Afro-Latin literature and culture.

Slavery in Cuban Narrative

Literary Bondage

Ann Gonzalez

Ann González

Second series

Modern Latin-American Fiction Writers

Lunes de Revolución (23-03-1959/06-11-1961), suplemento literario del periódico Revolución, órgano del Movimiento 26 de Julio, recogió en sus páginas el fervor, el entusiasmo, las dificultades y los conflictos de los primeros años de la Revolución Cubana. A la mayoritaria esperanza colectiva se unían la improvisación y las primeras pugnas por dotar de un sesgo ideológico determinado al proceso recién iniciado. Bajo la dirección de Guillermo Cabrera Infante y la subdirección de Pablo Armando Fernández, los 131 números de Lunes de Revolución fueron un reflejo de las difíciles relaciones entre cultura y política. Con el cierre del magazín en 1961 se llegaba al final de la luna de miel entre los intelectuales y la Revolución, y se pasaba de una etapa de espontaneidad y pluralismo a otra de institucionalización y oficialismo de la cultura.

Literatura y cultura en los primeros años de la Revolución Cubana

Lunes de Revolución

Discusses Cuban traditions, culture, religion, media, literature, and arts.

The poems included in this comprehensive anthology run the gamut of styles and themes, but all are by Latinos writing from the mid- twentieth century to the present. Some deal with issues specific to the Hispanic experience, such as displacement, identity and language. Others ponder universal concerns, such as love, family and humanity. In "Letter to Arturo," Mexican-American poet Lucha Corpi pens a song of love to her son: "You've hardly left / and already I miss the light / caress of your hands / on my hair, / and your laughter and your tears, / and all your questions / about seas, / moons and deserts. / And all my poems / are tying themselves together / in my throat."More than 60 Latino poets are represented in this wide-ranging collection that focuses on poetry from the four largest groups in the United States: Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans and Dominican Americans.Included are distinguished poets such as Julia Álvarez, Gloria Anzaldúa, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Martín Espada and Pedro Pietri, as well as less well-known writers who deserve more recognition. Whether writing about timeless issues or themes specific to their community, the poets in this volume craft a multilayered look at what it means to be Latino in the United States. Looking Out, Looking In is an indispensable and welcome addition to American and Latino literatures.

Anthology of Latino Poetry

Looking Out, Looking in

Guillermo I. Castillo-Feliú

͠ Guillermo I. Castillo-Feli

Discusses the traditions, culture, religion, media, literature, and arts of Chile.

William Luis

About

Books

Join the club