Post Conflict Central American Literature

Post-Conflict Central American Literature: Searching for Home and Longing to Belong studies often-overlooked contemporary poetry. Through the exploration of poetry and a select number of short stories, this book contemplates the meanings of home, belonging, and the homeland in post-conflict, globalizing, and neoliberal El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Aparicio analyzes literary representations of and meditations on the current conditions as well as the recent pasts of Central American homelands. Additionally, the book highlights aesthetic renditions of home at the same time that it engages with and is grounded in contemporary Central American cultures, politics, and societies. In effect, this book contests hegemonic and apparently commonsense views that assert that globalization produces global citizenship and globalized experiences. Instead it argues that a palpable desire for home and belonging survives and thrives in rapidly globalizing Central American homelands.

This is a volume of essays on post-civil war Central American narrative, bringing together leading experts in Central American literary and cultural studies from the USA, Central America and Europe to access recent developments in the regions artistic output including the emergence of Mayan literature and the criticism it has received inside and outside Central America. The authors draw on the pioneering (though often scattered and difficult to locate) academic work that has been produced so far, and aspire to bring it into focus to produce its own coherent body of criticism as well as point out themes and avenues for future research in the field. The essays address issues that are crucial for the understanding of what has been happening in Central American literature since the late 1980s, and how it relates to earlier literary output in the region. Hence, this book significantly contributes to the knowledge and understanding of Central American textuality over the last few decades, offering new insights into the development of both literary content and aesthetic quality. The main focus is on post-civil war literature, and how it tends to be different in content and style from literature published during the long years of social conflict and armed struggle. While all the essays focus on the main topic, they are wide-ranging, covering literature from the five countries most affected by civil war: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

This book brings together a variety of perspectives to explore the role of literature in the aftermath of political conflict, studying the ways in which writers approach violent conflict and the equally important subject of peace. Essays put insights from Peace and Conflict Studies into dialog with the unique ways in which literature attempts to understand the past, and to reimagine both the present and the future, exploring concepts like truth and reconciliation, post-traumatic memory, historical reckoning, therapeutic storytelling, transitional justice, archival memory, and questions about victimhood and reparation. Drawing on a range of literary texts and addressing a variety of post-conflict societies, this volume charts and explores the ways in which literature attempts to depict and make sense of this new philosophical terrain. As such, it aims to offer a self-conscious examination of literature, and the discipline of literary studies, considering the ability of both to interrogate and explore the legacies of political and civil conflict around the world. The book focuses on the experience of post-Apartheid South Africa, post-Troubles Northern Ireland, and post-dictatorship Latin America. The recent history of these regions, and in particular their acute experience of ethno-religious and civil conflict, make them highly productive contexts in which to begin examining the role of literature in the aftermath of social trauma. Rather than a definitive account of the subject, the collection defines a new field for literary studies, and opens it up to scholars working in other regional and national contexts. To this end, the book includes essays on post-1989 Germany, post-9/11 United States, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Sierra Leone, and narratives of asylum seeker/refugee communities. This volume’s comparative frame draws on well-established precedents for thinking about the cultural politics of these regions, making it a valuable resource for scholars of Comparative Literature, Peace and Conflicts Studies, Human Rights, Transitional Justice, and the Politics of Literature.

Central America has a long history as a site of cultural and political exchange, from Mayan and Nahua trade networks to the effects of Spanish imperialism, capitalism, and globalization. In Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context, instructors will find practical, interdisciplinary, and innovative pedagogical approaches to the cultures of Central America that are adaptable to various fields of study. The essays map out classroom lessons that encourage students to relate writings and films to their own experience of global interconnectedness and to read critically the history that binds Central America to the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. In the context of debates about immigration and a growing Central American presence in the United States, this book provides vital resources about the region's cultural production and covers trends in Central American literary studies including Mayan and other Indigenous literatures, modernismo, Jewish and Afro-descendant literatures, nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, and contemporary texts and films. This volume contains discussion of the following authors, filmmakers, and public figures: Humberto Ak'abal, María José Álvarez and Martha Clarissa Hernández, Dennis Ávila, Abner Benaim, Jayro Bustamante, Berta Cáceres, Isaac Esau Carrillo Can, Jennifer Cárcamo, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Quince Duncan, Jacinta Escudos, Regina José Galindo, Francisco Gavidia, Francisco Goldman, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Gaspar Pedro González, Carlos "Cubena" Guillermo Wilson, Eduardo Halfon, Tatiana Huezo, Florence Jaugey, Hernán Jimenez, Óscar Martínez, Victor Montejo, Marisol Ceh Moo, Victor Perera, Archbishop Óscar Romero, José Coronel Urtecho, and Marcela Zamora.

This book explores the power of words in post-Peace El Salvador and Guatemala—their violent and equally liberating power. The volume explores the entire post-Peace Accords era in both Central American countries. In “post-conflict” settings, denying or forgetting the repressive past and its many victims does violence to those victims, while remembering and giving testimony about the past can be cathartic for survivors, relatives, and even for perpetrators. This project will appeal to readers interested in development, societies in transition, global peace studies, and Central American studies.

How the dissemination of Latin American literature in the U.S. was "caught between the desire to support the literary revolution of the Boom writers and the fear of revolutionary politics" (John King).

This book offers a comprehensive guide to global literary engagement with the Cold War. Eschewing the common focus on national cultures, the collection defines Cold War literature as an international current focused on the military and ideological conflicts of the age and characterised by styles and approaches that transcended national borders. Drawing on specialists from across the world, the volume analyses the period’s fiction, poetry, drama and autobiographical writings in three sections: dominant concerns (socialism, decolonisation, nuclearism, propaganda, censorship, espionage), common genres (postmodernism, socialism realism, dystopianism, migrant poetry, science fiction, testimonial writing) and regional cultures (Asia, Africa, Oceania, Europe and the Americas). In doing so, the volume forms a landmark contribution to Cold War literary studies which will appeal to all those working on literature of the 1945-1989 period, including specialists in comparative literature, postcolonial literature, contemporary literature and regional literature.

Domínguez has drawn together fifteen leading scholars on international relations and comparative politics from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States, thus bringing to bear varying national perspectives from several corners of the hemisphere to analyze the intersection between regional security issues and the democracy building process in Latin America.