Latinx Literature Unbound by Ralph E. Rodriguez

Latinx Literature Unbound

Undoing Ethnic Expectation

Ralph E. Rodriguez, Ralph Rodriguez

Fordham University Press · Print & ebook · May 8, 2018

Since the 1990s, there has been unparalleled growth in the literary output from an ever more diverse group of Latinx writers.

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Who it’s for
Rodriguez questions the Latinx category and considers genre as an alternative lens.
Genres
Hispanic American Lit Crit, Race & Culture in Literature, Literary Theory
Published
Fordham University Press, May 8, 2018

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About this book

Since the 1990s, there has been unparalleled growth in the literary output from an ever more diverse group of Latinx writers. Extant criticism, however, has yet to catch up with the diversity of writers we label Latinx and the range of themes about which they write. Little sustained scholarly attention has been paid, moreover, to the very category under which we group this literature.

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Latinx Literature Unbound, thus, begins with a fundamental question “What does it mean to label a work of literature or an entire corpus of literature Latinx?” From this question others emerge: What does Latinx allow or predispose us to see, and what does it preclude us from seeing? If the grouping—which brings together a heterogeneous collection of people 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, Latinx Literature Unbound frees Latinx literature from taken-for-granted critical assumptions about identity and theme. It argues that there may be more salubrious taxonomies than Latinx for organizing and analyzing this literature. Privileging the act of reading as a temporal, meaning-making event, Ralph E. Rodriguez argues that genre may be a more durable category for analyzing this literature and suggests new ways we might proceed with future studies of the writing we have come to identify as Latinx.

Rethinking Latinx Labels

Rodriguez questions the Latinx category and considers genre as an alternative lens.

Come here for

  • An examination of what the Latinx label reveals and obscures
  • A case for genre as a category for literary analysis

Expect

  • Reading treated as a temporal, meaning-making event
  • Suggestions for future study of Latinx writing

Where it sits

Hispanic American Lit Crit98%
Literary Theory28%
Race & Culture in Literature26%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Hispanic American Lit Crit
  • Hispanic American Studies
Authors
Ralph E. Rodriguez, Ralph Rodriguez
Publisher
Fordham University Press
Published
May 8, 2018
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
Hispanic American Lit Crit