Fordham University Press Latinx Literature Unbound: Undoing Ethnic Expectation

Since the 1990s, there has been unparalleled growth in the literary output from an ever more diverse group of Latina/o writers. The extant criticism, however, has yet to catch up with the diversity of writers we label Latina/o and the range of themes about which they write. Little sustained scholarly attention has been paid, moreover, to the very category― Latina/o―under which we group this literature. Latina/o Literature Unbound, thus, begins with a fundamental question “What does it mean to label a work of literature or an entire corpus of literature Latina/o?” From this question a host of others spin out: What does that grouping allow us to see, predispose us to see, and preclude us from seeing? If the grouping―which brings together a heterogeneous collection of people and groups under a seemingly homogeneous label―tells us something meaningful, is there a poetics we can develop that would facilitate our analysis of this literature? In answering these questions, Latina/o Literature Unbound seeks to unbind Latina/o literature from taken-for-granted critical assumptions about identity and theme. It argues that there may be more salubrious taxonomies than Latina/o for organizing and analyzing this literature. Following a neo-formalist interpretive model that privileges reading as a temporal, meaning-making event, the book argues that genre may be a more durable category for analyzing this literature. Finally, Latina/o Literature Unbound suggests some ways in which we might want to proceed as we move forward with future studies of the writing we have come to identify as Latina/o. Review Ralph Rodriguez has done the unimaginable: analyzed and accommodated the multiplicities, dynamism, growth, complex sensibilities and allegiances known as Latinx literature in one majestic volume. Eschewing the fictions of monolithic identities, he argues for expanding the "interpretive horizon" of genre and the spectrum of interlocking cultural productions. A groundbreaking book, Latinx Literature Unbound is essential reading for scholars, writers, and readers alike. Author: author of Dreaming in Cuban and Here in Berlin Source: Cristina García From the Author Ralph E. Rodriguez is associate professor of American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and English at Brown University. He is the author of Brown Gumshoes: Detective Fiction and the Search for Chicana/o Identity. About the Author Ralph E. Rodriguez is associate professor of American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and English at Brown University. He is the author of Brown Gumshoes: Detective Fiction and the Search for Chicana/o Identity.