Night and darkness in Latina/o art and literature
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.
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_.
"In this study, DeGuzmán 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." -- Lázaro Lima, _The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory_ (NYU Press, 2007)
"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)
Among Latina/o cultural producers discussed in _Buenas Noches, American Culture_:
George Romero, Cristina García, Oscar "Zeta" Acosta, Sergio Arau, Américo Paredes, Gloria Anzaldúa, Ana Castillo, John Rechy, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Juan Felipe Herrera, Andrés Montoya, Francisco X. Alarcón, Demetria Martínez, Leo Romero, Lucha Corpi, Carla Trujillo, Luz María Umpierre, Miguel Algarín, Rafael Campo, Rane Ramón Arroyo, Arturo Arias, Francisco Goldman, Héctor Tobar, Sylvia Sellers-García, Cristina Henríquez, Mariana Romo-Carmona, Jaime Manrique, Daniel Alarcón, Carlos Jiménez Cahua, Graciela Limón, and Mayra Santos-Febres.
To order call
1-800-842-6796
or visit
iupress.indiana.edu
June 2012
326 pp., 3 b&w illus.
Rights: World
ISBN: 978-0-253-00189-4
$28.00 paper
No comments:
Post a Comment