On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Who Are We? 1 Part One: Race and Ethnicity 1. “Jasón’s Indian”: Mexican Americans and the Denial of Indigenous Ethnicity in Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima 39 2. “Puerto Rican Negro”: Defining Race in Piri Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets 51 Part Two: Complicating the Origins 3. Speaking for Others: Problems of Representation in the Writing of Julia Alvarez 73 4. Complicating Cubanidad: Novels of Achy Obejas and Cristina García 93 Part Three: Difference and the Possibilities of Panethnicity 5. “The Pleas of the Desperate”: Magical Realism, Latinidad, and (or) Collective Agency in Ana Castillo’s So Far from God 139 6. Dirty Girls, German Shepherds, and Puerto Rican Independentistas: “The Latino Imaginary” and the Case of Cuba 161 7. Imagining Identity/Seeing Difference: Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue 196 Conclusion: The Shifting Nature of Latinidad 213 Notes 221 Works Cited 265 Index 285 ...