CGG Abstracts: Teaching Latino/a Literature

Clark and Hiraldo, community college instructors, discuss a course they developed on Latino/a literature, given the diversity within the Latino/a community. Although the group of people called “Latinos” in the United States has always been diverse, it is even more diverse now, including people who have been in the States for many generations (e.g., Puerto Ricans, Chicano/as) and immigrants from many different countries (e.g., Cuba, Nicaragua, Argentina). Any course on Latino/as must grapple with the linguistic, economic, cultural and social differences among Latino/as.

The authors developed a team-taught course, which they describe here. The biggest challenge was finding ways to integrate their different theoretical positions. Hiraldo tends to use literature in his courses that shows the ways that racial classifications are different in Latin American countries than in the U.S. Clark tends to focus on Chicana writers, many of whom see themselves as allied more with third-world feminists than with male Chicano writers.

 The reading list (which included theoretical works):

Allende, Isabel. Of Love and Shadows.

Meyer, Doris. "Exile and the Female Condition in Isabel Allendes' De amor y de sombra " International-Fiction-Review. 1988 Summer; 15(2): 151-157.

Alvarez, Julia. In the Time of the Butterflies.

Hiraldo, Carlos. "Identity Against the Grain: Latino Authors of African European Heritage and Their Encounters with the Racial Ideology of the United States." Segregated Miscegenation: On the Treatment of Racial Hybridity in the US and Latin American Literary Traditions. New York: Routlege, 2002.

Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera.

Cisneros, Sandra. Loose Woman.

Cisneros, Sandra. "Cactus Flowers: In Search of Tejana Feminist Poetry." Third-Woman. 1986; 3(1-2): 73-80.

Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne. "Chicana Literature from a Chicana Feminist Perspective." Herrera-Sobek, Maria and Viramontes, Helena Maria, Eds. Chicana Creativity and Criticism: Charting New Frontiers in American Literature. Houston: Arte Publico, 1988:139-145.

Diaz, Junot. Drown.

Maritza Ferez, Loida. Geographies of Home.

Retamar, Roberto Fernandez. "Caliban"

Ashcraft, Catherine. "Naming Knowledge: A Language for Reconstructing Domestic Violence and Systemic Gender Inequity." Women and Language. 2000 Spring; 23(1): 3-10.

Thomas, Piri. Down These Mean Streets.

Sanchez, Marta. "La Malinche at the Intersection: Race and Gender in Down These Streets," PMLA (January 1998): 117-128.