Overview

Often treated like night itself—both visible and invisible, feared and romanticized—Latina/os make up the largest minority group in the US. In her newest work, María DeGuzmán explores representations of night in art and literature from the Caribbean, Colombia, Central and South America, and the US, calling into question night's effect on the formation of identity for Latina/os in and outside of the US. She takes as her subject novels, short stories, poetry, essays, non-fiction, photo-fictions, photography, and film, and examines these texts through the lenses of nationhood, sexuality, human rights, exoticism, among others.

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9780253001894

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Reviews

<p> This wonderfully complex and comparative analysis of the aesthetics of night in Latino literature breaks new ground...it offers a compelling argument about the transvaluation of night in Latino literature that is completely new, original and insightful, deepening scholarship on the critical role of Latino literature in the U.S. body politic. --Theresa Delgadillo, Theresa Delgadillo, Author of Spiritual Mestizaje: Religion, Gender, Race and Nation in Contemporary Chicana Narrative (Duke University Press, 2011)--Theresa Delgadillo Theresa Delgadillo, Author of Spiritual Mestizaje: Religion, Gender, Race and Nation in Contemporary Chicana Narrative (Duke University Press, 2011)

[T]he multidisciplinary approach of this work allows DeGuzman to reflect on the complexity and multiplicity of Latinidades in both content and method, successfully situating the volume in the broad, and often deliberately complex and nuanced, fields of Latina/o Studies, American Studies, and Cultural Studies (to mention a few). -Modern Language Review DeGuzman... offers new insights into how representations of night have been employed to form (impose) a Latino identity within and beyond the borders of the US. Juxtaposing historical illustrations with modern literary and artistic depictions of night from Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the US, she compellingly argues that there are new trends in representations of night used by Latino/a writers and artists as a means of self-representation. -Choice This wonderfully complex and comparative analysis of the aesthetics of night in Latino literature breaks new ground.... it offers a compelling argument about the transvaluation of night in Latino literature that is completely new, original and insightful, deepening scholarship on the critical role of Latino literature in the U.S. body politic. -Theresa Delgadillo, author of Spiritual Mestizaje: Religion, Gender, Race and Nation in Contemporary Chicana Narrative In this study, DeGuzman has been able to accomplish what no study to date has been able to do: to investigate how night -in all its figurations-has constituted an aesthetics of both self-representation for Latinos as well as a viable and effective form of resistance to state-sanctioned inclusion. Its diversity of texts and clearly reasoned analysis make it a potential standard text for the field. -Lazaro Lima, author of The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory

This wonderfully complex and comparative analysis of the aesthetics of night in Latino literature breaks new ground.... it offers a compelling argument about the transvaluation of night in Latino literature that is completely new, original and insightful, deepening scholarship on the critical role of Latino literature in the U.S. body politic.--Theresa Delgadillo, author of Spiritual Mestizaje: Religion, Gender, Race and Nation in Contemporary Chicana Narrative

Author Information

María DeGuzmán is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of Latina/o Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is author of Spain's Long Shadow: The Black Legend, Off-Whiteness, and Anglo American Empire.

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