National Hispanic Heritage Month

This collection explores the literary tradition of Caribbean Latino literature written in the U.S. beginning with José Martí and concluding with 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Junot Díaz. The contributors consider the way that spatial migration in literature serves as a metaphor for gender, sexuality, racial, identity, linguistic, and national migrations.

What are Hispanic alternative communities and how are they represented in literature, film, and popular music? This book studies the fictional representation of circles of artists and intellectuals, youth gangs, musical bands, packs of marginal urban dwellers, groups of immigrants, and other diverse associations that share the common trait of being small and subversive collectives, perhaps akin to secret societies plotting to take control of society. These groups usually exist within a larger and established community - typically, the nation-state - though maintaining with it complicated relationships.

Written by more than thirty experts in cultural theory, literary history, and literary criticism, this authoritative and up-to-date reference places major authors in the complex cultural and historical contexts that have compelled their distinctive fiction, essays, and poetry. This text provides the historical background to help the reader understand the people and culture that have defined Latin American literature and its reception.