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Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons™
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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature
Special Focus Introduction: Centering Black Cultural Production In Translation, Corine Tachtiris, Priscilla Layne
Special Focus Introduction: Centering Black Cultural Production In Translation, Corine Tachtiris, Priscilla Layne
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Special Focus Introduction: Centering Black Cultural Production in Translation
Central American Enunciations From Us Zones Of Indifference, Or The Sentences Of Coloniality, Oriel María Siu
Central American Enunciations From Us Zones Of Indifference, Or The Sentences Of Coloniality, Oriel María Siu
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This essay explores Central American diasporic experiences in the US as sites for the continued exertion and reproduction of coloniality. A longstanding matrix of power transgressing all forms of borders and permeating all aspects of life—an irreversible and transgressive disease—coloniality operates so forcefully that it upholds its own survival. In the process, we live its plural incongruity and even extend its most contemptuous signs. Surveying a series of narrative texts produced from within the Central American diaspora in cities like Los Angeles and New York—Roberto Quesada’s Big Banana, Oscar René Benitez’s Inmortales, Hector Tobar’s Tattooed Soldier, and …
From Epicentros To Fault Lines: Rewriting Central America From The Diaspora, Maritza Cárdenas
From Epicentros To Fault Lines: Rewriting Central America From The Diaspora, Maritza Cárdenas
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This essay examines how representations from the Central American diaspora rewrite the Central American imaginary. It focuses on the ways EpiCentroAmerica—a poetry collective who view themselves as Central American, but reject a single unifying vision of home by seeing themselves as part of a transregional and transnational community—challenge traditional configurations of Central America(n). This reinscription of the signifier Central America is best exemplified in the work of Salvadoran-American poet Marlon Morales, whose poem “Centroamérica is,” avoids suturing Central America with traditional nationalist geological images of volcanoes and the isthmus, in favor of constructing Central America as an amorphous abstract and …
Cultural Transgressions In Omar S. Castañeda’S Remembering To Say ‘Mouth’ Or ‘Face’, Alicia Ivonne Estrada
Cultural Transgressions In Omar S. Castañeda’S Remembering To Say ‘Mouth’ Or ‘Face’, Alicia Ivonne Estrada
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This study examines the ways Omar S. Castañeda’s Remembering to Say ‘Mouth’ or ‘Face’ (1993) deconstructs national and hyphenated identities. It argues that rooting these short stories within the Popol Wuj’s narrative structure allows for the construction of different historical references and cultural genealogies, which are not solely based on national identities or histories. This is evident in the second section entitled “Crossing the Border,” which blends myths from the Popol Wuj with the characters, contemporary historical contexts in the United States and Guatemala. At the same time, the stories illustrate the protagonists’ multiple displacements, but also their links to …
Diasporic Reparations: Repairing The Social Imaginaries Of Central America In The Twenty-First Century, Ana Patricia Rodríguez
Diasporic Reparations: Repairing The Social Imaginaries Of Central America In The Twenty-First Century, Ana Patricia Rodríguez
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Contemporary Central American diasporic writers like Horacio Castellanos Moya, Francisco Goldman, Héctor Tobar, and Marcos McPeek Villatoro, in Senselessness (2008), The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? (2007), The Tattooed Soldier (1998), and the Romilia Chacón detective series, write in response to various forms of violence. They grapple with the image of Central America as a site of unsustainable violence, inhospitable material conditions, and unresolved historical issues that extend into the lives of Central Americans in the United States. The past is not easily dismissed, but lies at the core of transnational Central American subject formation. This essay …
Passion Plays: The Dominican Diaspora In Waddys Jáquez’S P.A.R.G.O., Maja Horn
Passion Plays: The Dominican Diaspora In Waddys Jáquez’S P.A.R.G.O., Maja Horn
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This article analyzes how the play P.A.R.G.O. (2001), written, directed, and performed by the Dominican Waddys Jáquez represents the contemporary experience of the Dominican diaspora. Jaquéz himself forms part of a new generation of diasporic artists who frequently return “home,” to the Dominican Republic, and who, unlike the previous generation of diasporic artists and writers, continue to find their most valuable audience there. This tendency towards an increasing interconnectivity between diaspora and homeland is represented and a/effectively reinforced in P.A.R.G.O. The play brings the experience of the diaspora close to home for the audience, not by compelling them to identify …