Overview

Excavating narrative memories, Across Canons examines literary allusions to a classic Latin American canon that resurface in the work of Latin American writers who live and work in the United States. The immigrant literature of Edmundo Paz Soldán, Alberto Fuguet, and Cristina Rivera Garza from the late 1990s and early 2000s provides an important glimpse into representations of Latin America’s relationship with the United States and how immigration has shaped it. Author Thania Muñoz D. looks at immigrant experiences impacted by a prism of social and political factors, including free trade agreements, drug trafficking, political violence, massive foreign debt, and economic dependency. The author examines why these writers refuse to identify as immigrants and reject stereotypical portrayals. Throughout, Muñoz D. makes the case for a new field within Latinx literature: Latin American immigrant writing in Spanish. She explains why this type of literary work is critical across Latin American, Latinx, and U.S. literature. This book highlights the benefits of comparative, interdisciplinary interpretations that allow readers and scholars to grapple with the realities of a multilingual Latin American–origin literary present and future of the United States.

Full Product Details

9780816554744

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Thania Muñoz D. brilliantly illuminates the work of Latin American writers in the United States as a dynamic new field within Latinx and Latin American literatures, and reveals the need for multilingual, comparative readings to understand how this work is reshaping U.S. literature and culture. Against the tendency to detain, imprison, or devalue the cultural contributions of Latin Americans, this book grapples with acclaimed and exciting new writing by Cristina Rivera Garza, Edmundo Paz Soldán, and Alberto Fuguet, with special attention to their treatment of the alienating experience of immigrating to the United States.""--Laura Lomas, author of Translating Empire: José Martí, Migrant Latino Subjects, and American Modernities ""Muñoz's application of narrative memory in the analyses of the works of Paz Soldán, Fuguet, and Rivera Garza combines with the different manifestations of their characters' immigration circumstances to provide an interesting and informative read.""--Michele Shaul, author of A Survey of the Novels of Ana Castillo: A Contemporary Mexican American Writer

Author Information

Thania Muñoz D. is an immigrant educator, translator, poet, and scholar. Her writing and translations have appeared in Copihue, Fence, the Latin American Literary Review, and others. She immigrated in 1998 to Southern California from Jalisco, México, and since 2015 has lived in Maryland. She is an associate professor of Latinx and Latin American literature, director of the MA Program in Intercultural Communication at UMBC, and the managing editor and founder of Latin@ Literatures.

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