A Companion to US Latino Literatures (review)

Caulfield and Davis’s Companion to US Latino Literatures, published by Tamesis in their Monografías A series, which now includes an impressive range of such literary companions, provides ample proof that Latino cultural production is gaining in critical recognition. It has now effected the transition from the numerous anthologies of primary works and detailed academic studies of key aspects and authors to a companion volume that confirms the rightful place of such literature in the canon of world literatures and simultaneously opens it up to a wide audience of scholars and students.

After a brief introduction by the editors, which furnishes the reader with an extremely useful historical overview of the development and status of the Latino communities in the United States up to the present day, the book is divided into twelve chapters that aim to chart the cultural production of Latinos, largely using the criterion of nation, or occasionally region, of provenance as a way of effectively subdividing the work. It thus starts with two chapters on Chicano/a literary production, one by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez, which gives a broad overview of the field, and a second by Eva Paulino Bueno, which focuses on the unparalleled crossover success that Sandra Cisneros has enjoyed with mainstream US readers. This is followed by a chapter by Patricia M. Montilla on Neorican literature that focuses on the ways in which the island is perceived in comparison to the United States mainland in the work of a community that moves back and forth between these different locations with great fluidity, given their distinctive status vis-à-vis US citizenship. The Companion then turns its attention to the varying different manifestations of Cuban-American literary production, with one chapter by Jorge Febles that explores the linguistic and identitarian games apparent in such literature, and a second by Armando González-Pérez that focuses specifically on the representation of Afro-Cuban identity in diasporic theatre. A further chapter, again by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez, gives a broad overview of Dominican-American literature.

Subsequent to this coverage of literature stemming from the most prominent and numerous groups of US Latinos, the Companion then moves on to consider the literary production of smaller and/or much more recent groups of Latinos. This includes a chapter by Vincent Spina that focuses on the work of three writers of Central American origin, effectively teasing out the differences between the three writers themselves based on national origin and degree of adaptation to life in the USA, as well as the major differences between these writers considered as a group and the literary production of more prominent groups of US Latinos. A further chapter by Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta focuses on ‘brazuca’ literature; that is to say, literature produced by Brazilians, either temporary visitors or immigrants to the USA, on the subject of their relationship to the USA. Finally, Sergio Waisman contributes a particularly interesting chapter on Argentine-American literature that not only challenges the rationale for including such writers in a companion on US Latino literatures but also queries the concept of a unified, monolingual national culture emanating from Argentina that might effectively be contrasted with that of the USA.

The Companion then diverges from its classification of writers by way of their original national/regional affiliations, to offer a chapter by Lydia M. Gil on Jewish-Latino literature as a whole, an overview by Carlota Caulfield of US Latina Caribbean women poets, and a last chapter by Darién J. Davis on Latinos as represented, by themselves or others, in film. The two latter chapters are perhaps the weakest in the anthology in terms of analysis and critical rigour. Caulfield’s chapter falls into the trap of simply listing writers, their awards, affiliations and publications, with little analysis to engage the reader, and also repeats almost verbatim information about writers that has been given elsewhere in the book. Davis’s chapter is factually inaccurate and superficial...