Arendt’s Children in US Central American Poetry

doi:10.1017/9781009314091.011

Chapter 8 - Arendt’s Children in US Central American Poetry

from Part II - Transforming Genres

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 June 2025

Guadalupe Escobar

Edited by

William Orchard

Show author details

William Orchard: Affiliation:
Queens College, CUNY

Book contents

Get access

Summary

This chapter highlights US Central American poetic responses to the increased social significance of legality, a ripple effect of the 1990s. The chapter expands Carolyn Forché’s concept of poetry of witness, testimonial verse foregrounding extremity, to include the nexus between constructions of illegality for many Central American refugees and legacies of US colonialism. The chapter considers what new insights might emerge from drawing on the conventions of witness poetries that incorporate both war trauma and Central American child migration. The chapter focuses on the Central American child and how it has been reconfigured in the poetic work of Afro-Panamanian Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Guatemalan American Maya Chinchilla, and Honduran American Roy G. Guzmán. Finally, it treats the poetry collection Unaccompanied (2017) by Salvadoran American Javier Zamora and shows that unaccompanied poetics can reimagine perspectives from (formerly) stateless children and confront the artificial stratifications of legal statuses.

Keywords

contemporary Latinx poetry poetry of witness Central American diaspora child refugees Javier Zamora

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: Latinx Literature in Transition, 1992–2020 , pp. 151 - 166

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009314091.011 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works Cited

Abrego, Leisy J., and Hernández, Ester. “#FamiliesBelongTogether: Central American Family Separations from the 1980s to 2019.” In Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Reader, edited by Ramos-Zayas, Ana Y. and Rúa, Mérida M.. NYU P, 2021, pp. 173–185.CrossRef Google Scholar

Alegría, Claribel. The Woman of the River. U of Pittsburgh P, 1988.CrossRef Google Scholar

Archila, William. The Art of Exile. Bilingual P, 2009.Google Scholar

Arias, Arturo. “EpiCentro: The Emergence of a New Central American-American Literature.” Comparative Literature, vol. 64, no. 3, 2012, pp. 300–315.10.1215/00104124-1672961CrossRef Google Scholar

Arias, Arturo. “The Ghosts of the Past, Human Dignity, and the Collective Need for Reparation.” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 2010, pp. 207–218.CrossRef Google Scholar

Arias, Arturo, and Milian, Claudia. “US Central Americans: Representations, Agency and Communities.” Latino Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, 2013, pp. 131–149.10.1057/lst.2013.1CrossRef Google Scholar

Bhabha, Jacqueline. “Arendt’s Children: Do Today’s Migrant Children Have a Right to Have Rights?” Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 2, 2009, pp. 410–451.CrossRef Google Scholar

Brady, Mary Pat. Scales of Captivity: Racial Capitalism and the Latinx Child. Duke UP, 2022.Google Scholar

Cárdenas, Maritza E. Constituting Central American-Americans: Transnational Identities and the Politics of Dislocation. Rutgers UP, 2018.CrossRef Google Scholar

Carr Vellino, Brenda. “Beyond the Trauma Aesthetic: The Cultural Work of Human Rights Witness Poetries.” In The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights, edited by McClennen, Sophia and Moore, Alexandra Schultheis. Routledge, 2015.Google Scholar

Chinchilla, Maya. The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poetica. Korima P, 2015.Google Scholar

Chinchilla, Maya, and Alvarado, Karina Oliva, eds. Desde el EpiCentro: An Anthology of US Central American Poetry. N.p., 2007.Google Scholar

De León, Jason. The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. U of California P, 2015.Google Scholar

Dowdy, Michael. “Reinventing Ecopoetics: Chicano Poetry’s Undocumentary Turn.” Aztlán, vol. 41, no. 1, 2016, pp. 21–53.10.1525/azt.2016.41.1.21CrossRef Google Scholar

Escobar, Guadalupe. “Testimonio at 50.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 48, no. 2, 2021, pp. 17–32.CrossRef Google Scholar

Forché, Carolyn. Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. Norton, 1993.Google Scholar

García, Angela S. Legal Passing: Navigating Undocumented Life and Local Immigration Law. U of California P, 2019.Google Scholar

Gonzáles, Roberto G. Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America. U of California P, 2015.CrossRef Google Scholar

Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. U of Minnesota P, 2008.Google Scholar

Guzmán, Roy G. Catrachos. Graywolf P, 2018.Google Scholar

Herrera, Juan Felipe. Everyday We Get More Illegal. City Lights Books, 2020.Google Scholar

Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. Columbia UP, 2012.10.7312/hirs15652CrossRef Google Scholar

Josiowicz, Alejandra J., and Coronado, Irasema. Children Crossing Borders: Latin American Migrant Childhoods. U of Arizona P, 2022.Google Scholar

Limón, Ada. The Hurting Kind. Milkweed, 2022.Google Scholar

Linares Hernández, Leticia, Martínez, Rubén, and Tobar, Héctor. The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States. Tía Chucha P, 2017.Google Scholar

Menjívar, Cecilia, and Ábrego, Leisy. “Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 117, no. 5, 2012, pp. 1380–1421.CrossRef Google Scholar

Menjívar, Cecilia, Agadjanian, Victor, and Oh, Byeongdon. “The Contradictions of Liminal Legality: Economic Attainment and Civic Engagement of Central American Immigrants on Temporary Protected Status.” Social Problems, vol. 69, no. 3, 2022, pp. 678–698.10.1093/socpro/spaa052CrossRef Google Scholar PubMed

Milian, Claudia. “Crisis Management and the Latinx Child.” English Language Notes, vol. 56, no. 2, 2018, pp. 8–24.10.1215/00138282-6960680CrossRef Google Scholar

Oboler, Suzanne. “Disposable Strangers: Mexican Americans, Latinxs, and the Ethnic Label ‘Hispanic’ in the Twenty-First Century.” In Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Reader, edited by Ramos-Zayas, Ana Y. and Rúa, Mérida M.. NYU P, 2021, pp. 67–80.10.18574/nyu/9781479805198.003.0006CrossRef Google Scholar

Padilla, Yajaira M. From Threatening Guerrillas to Forever Illegals: US Central Americans and the Cultural Politics of Non-Belonging. U of Texas P, 2022.CrossRef Google Scholar

Paik, A. Naomi, Ruiz, Jason, and Schreiber, Rebecca M.. “Sanctuary’s Radical Networks.” Radical History Review, vol. 135, 2019, pp. 1–13.10.1215/01636545-7607797CrossRef Google Scholar

Pérez, Daniel Enrique. “Queer Poetics: Voices of the Subaltern in American Poetry.” In A Companion to American Poetry, edited by Balkun, Mary McAleer, Gray, Jeffrey, and Jaussen, Paul. Wiley Blackwell, 2022, pp. 216–229.CrossRef Google Scholar

Rodríguez, Ana Patricia. “Invisible No More: U.S. Central American Literature Before and Beyond the Age of Neoliberalism.” In The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature, edited by González, John Morán and Lomas, Laura. Cambridge UP, 2018, pp. 510–531.CrossRef Google Scholar

Saldaña-Portillo, María Josefina. “The Violence of Citizenship in the Making of Refugees: The United States and Central America.” Social Text, vol. 37, no. 4, 2019, pp. 1–21.10.1215/01642472-7794343CrossRef Google Scholar

White, Gillian. Lyric Shame: The “Lyric” Subject of Contemporary American Poetry. Harvard UP, 2014.10.4159/harvard.9780674736313CrossRef Google Scholar

Zamora, Javier. Unaccompanied. Copper Canyon P, 2017.Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.