Latinos And Nationhood

"Latinos have struggled to define themselves within the United States since the founding of the American Republic. Over the course of two centuries, Latino intellectuals wrote, published books and periodicals, and led political campaigns to establish their people's nationhood; by the 21st century, Latinos have gone beyond the concept of nation to erase borders and embrace other like themselves around the world"--

Spanning from the early nineteenth century to today, this intellectual history examines the work of Latino writers who explored the major philosophic and political themes of their day, including the meaning and implementation of democracy, their democratic and cultural rights under U.S. dominion, their growing sense of nationhood, and the challenges of slavery and disenfranchisement of women in a democratic republic that had yet to realize its ideals. Over the course of two centuries, these Latino or Hispanic intellectuals were natural-born citizens of the United States, immigrants, or political refugees. Many of these intellectuals, whether citizens or not, strove to embrace and enliven such democratic principles as freedom of speech and of the press, the protection of minorities in the Bill of Rights and in subsequent laws, and the protection of linguistic and property rights, among many others, guaranteed by treaties when the United States incorporated their homelands into the Union. The first six chapters present the work of lesser-known historical figures—most of whom have been consistently ignored by Anglo- and Euro-centric history and whose works have been widely inaccessible until recently—who were revolutionaries, editors of magazines and newspapers, and speechmakers who influenced the development of a Latino consciousness. The last three chapters deal with three foundational figures of the Chicano Movement, the last two of whom either subverted the concept of nationhood or went beyond it to embrace internationalism in an outreach to humanity as a whole. Latinos and Nationhood sheds new light on the biographies of Félix Varela, José Alvarez de Toledo y Dubois, Francisco Ramírez, Tomás Rivera, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, and Gloria E. Anzaldúa, among others.

This book examines the ways in which recent U.S. Latina literature challenges popular definitions of nationhood and national identity. It explores a group of feminist texts that are representative of the U.S. Latina literary boom of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, when an emerging group of writers gained prominence in mainstream and academic circles. Through close readings of select contemporary Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American works, Maya Socolovsky argues that these narratives are “remapping” the United States so that it is fully integrated within a larger, hemispheric Americas. Looking at such concerns as nation, place, trauma, and storytelling, writers Denise Chavez, Sandra Cisneros, Esmeralda Santiago, Ana Castillo, Himilce Novas, and Judith Ortiz Cofer challenge popular views of Latino cultural “unbelonging” and make strong cases for the legitimate presence of Latinas/os within the United States. In this way, they also counter much of today’s anti-immigration rhetoric. Imagining the U.S. as part of a broader "Americas," these writings trouble imperialist notions of nationhood, in which political borders and a long history of intervention and colonization beyond those borders have come to shape and determine the dominant culture's writing and the defining of all Latinos as "other" to the nation.

This book examines the ways that recent U.S. Latina literature challenges popular definitions of nationhood and national identity. It explores the works of Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American writers Denise Chavez, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Esmeralda Santiago, and Himilce Novas to show how these texts argue for the legitimate belonging of Latino/as within U.S. borders and counter much of today's anti-immigration rhetoric.

Latino/a Thought brings together the most important writings that shape Latino consciousness, culture, and activism today. This historical anthology is unique in its presentation of cross cultural writings especially from Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban writers and political documents that shape the ideology and experience of U.S. Latinos. Students can read, first hand, the works or authors who most shaped their cultural heritage. They are guided by vivid introductions that set each article or document in its historical context and describe its relevance today. The writings touch on many themes, but are guided by this book's concern for a quest for public citizenship among all Latino populations and a better understanding of racialized populations in the U.S. today. No other book offers readers such a rich history of the Latino heritage experienced in this book in the voices and political actions whose influence reached across generations."

In a bumpy, anxiety-producing plane ride across the Straits of Florida to Cuba in 1979, graduate student Gerald Poyo knew his life would either end that day in the World War II-era prop airplane or change forever. He survived the trip, and his ten-day visit solidified his academic research and confirmed his career as a history professor. In this wide-ranging examination of his relatives’ migrations in the Western Hemisphere—the Americas—over five generations, Poyo uses his training as a historian to unearth his family’s stories. Beginning with his great-great grandfather’s flight from Cuba to Key West in 1869, this is also about the loss of a beloved homeland. His father was Cuban; his mother was from Flint, Michigan. Poyo himself was six months old when his parents took him to Bogotá, Colombia. He celebrated his eighth birthday in New Jersey and his tenth in Venezuela. He was 12 when he landed in Buenos Aires, where he spent his formative years before returning to the United States for college. “My heart belonged to the South, but somehow I knew I could not escape the North,” he writes. Transnationalism shaped his life and identity. Divided into two parts, the first section traces his parents and ancestors as he links their stories to impersonal movements in the world—Spanish colonialism, Cuban nationalism, United States expansionism—that influenced their lives. The second half explores how exile, migration and growing up a “hemispheric American, a borderless American” impacted his own development and stimulated questions about poverty, religion and relations between Latin America and the United States. Ultimately, this thought-provoking memoir unveils the universal desire for a safe, stable life for one’s family.

Finally, she explores how news is produced in both print and broadcast media for the vast Latino population in the United States, using a cutting-edge blend of the quantitative and qualitative approaches in her research."--BOOK JACKET.