Killing Spanish: Literary Essays on Ambivalent U.S. Latino/A Identity (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781403963949)

Killing Spanish suggests that the doubles, madwomen and other raging characters that populate the pages of contemporary U.S. Latino/a literature allegorize ambivalence about both present American identity and past Caribbean and Latin American origins. The family novels Sandín explores -- ranging from work by the Cuban American Cristina García to the island Puerto Rican Rosario Ferré -- uncover the split between Americanized protagonists and their families, a split usually resolved through the killing of a character representing origins. Race and class differences, and poverty, cause protagonists in work by the Nuyoricans Piri Thomas, the Dominican American Junot Díaz, and others, to embrace the street as the new Latino home. If the family novels exact the death of "Spanish" in the person of a double character, the urban fiction and poetry project the "mean" street, churning with the productive and destructive energies of ambivalence, as the landscape of the fragmented U.S. Latino/a psyche.

Author: L. Sandin
ISBN-10: 1403963940
ISBN-13: 9781403963949
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Language: English
Published: 11/25/2004
Pages: 167
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.91lbs
Size: 9.46h x 6.46w x 0.77d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2005 pg. 1590