Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Rereading the Colonial Archive
- Part II The Roots and Routes of Latina/o Literature
- Part III Negotiating Literary Modernity
- Part IV Literary Migrations across the Americas, 1980–2017
- 22 Undocumented Immigration in Latina/o Literature
- 23 Latina Feminist Theory and Writing
- 24 Invisible No More
- 25 Latina/o Life Narratives
- 26 Poetics of the “Majority Minority”
- 27 The Quisqueya Diaspora
- 28 Listening to Literature
- 29 Brazuca Literature
- 30 Staging Latinidad and Interrogating Neoliberalism in Contemporary Latina/o Performance and Border Art
- 31 Trans-American Popular Forms of Latina/o Literature
- 32 Trauma, Translation, and Migration in the Crossfire of the Americas
- 33 The Mesoamerican Corridor, Central American Transits, and Latina/o Becomings
- 34 Differential Visions
- 35 Temporal Borderlands
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
24 - Invisible No More
U.S. Central American Literature Before and Beyond the Age of Neoliberalism
from Part IV - Literary Migrations across the Americas, 1980–2017
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2018
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Rereading the Colonial Archive
- Part II The Roots and Routes of Latina/o Literature
- Part III Negotiating Literary Modernity
- Part IV Literary Migrations across the Americas, 1980–2017
- 22 Undocumented Immigration in Latina/o Literature
- 23 Latina Feminist Theory and Writing
- 24 Invisible No More
- 25 Latina/o Life Narratives
- 26 Poetics of the “Majority Minority”
- 27 The Quisqueya Diaspora
- 28 Listening to Literature
- 29 Brazuca Literature
- 30 Staging Latinidad and Interrogating Neoliberalism in Contemporary Latina/o Performance and Border Art
- 31 Trans-American Popular Forms of Latina/o Literature
- 32 Trauma, Translation, and Migration in the Crossfire of the Americas
- 33 The Mesoamerican Corridor, Central American Transits, and Latina/o Becomings
- 34 Differential Visions
- 35 Temporal Borderlands
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Central America has long been pivotal to U.S. economic and geopolitical interests and the U.S. political and cultural imaginary because of the isthmus’s geographical location. After the Gold Rush of 1849 made a transit route imperative through the middle of the hemisphere, U.S. filibusters, such as William Walker led the charge in Nicaragua during 1856-1857, followed by U.S. sponsorship of coups and revolutions in the region, including the creation of Panama after Colombia rejected the demands of the United States to build a trans-isthmian canal. Since the turn of the twentieth century, Central American writers such as Guatemalan Máximo Soto Hall (El problema, 1899; La sombra de la Casa Blanca, 1927), Salvadoran Roque Dalton (Taberna y otros lugares, 1968; Dalton y Cía, 1969), and others have examined the consequences of U.S. involvement in Central America and its people. With the escalation of U.S. military interventions and U.S.-backed government repression in the 1970s and 1980s, a vast flow of migrants, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, as well as Honduras and Panama, have made their way to the United States. Combined, U.S. interventions, local armed conflicts, and the migration flow from Central America produce the conditions that make possible the production of a U.S. Central American literature. While U.S. Central American writers often write about their particular historical contexts in and outside of the isthmus, they also call attention to communal survival strategies of invisibility, passing, or cultural camouflaging which Central Americans often deploy in the United States. In their works, U.S. Central American writers such as Tanya Maria Barrientos, Francisco Goldman, Héctor Tobar, Marcos McPeek Villatoro, and poets like Maya Chinchilla, Lorena Duarte, Leticia Hernández-Linares, and William Archila, among others, not only give visibility and voice to an array of U.S. Central American subjectivities but also contribute to an expansion of Latina/o literary history, now forced to reckon with Central America. This chapter examines the production of U.S. Central American literature before and beyond the age of neoliberalism.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature , pp. 510 - 531Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018
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