Latinx Literature and Recent US History
from Part I - Shifting Coordinates
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 June 2025
Some key dates in recent US history help us understand the paths of Latinx literature since 1992. This chapter considers five key years: 1992, 1994, 2001, 2008, and 2016. The Columbian quincentenary catalyzed decolonial thinking as writers think about the shared histories of colonization that unite Latinx groups. The events of 1992 help frame NAFTA’s 1994 enactment as a form of neocolonialism that rewrote the terms of national belonging. 9/11 further tears the social order asunder as the US violently reacted. While some writers provide accounts of the persistent grief and trauma experienced by Latinxs after 9/11, others critique US militarism and consider Latinx complicity in state violence. Ramón Saldívar poses the election of Barack Obama in 2008 as inaugurating a period in which Latinx writers turn to speculative forms to articulate new racial imaginaries. If Obama’s election produced possibility, the 2016 presidential election stimulated Latinx writers to contest the administration’s anti-immigration policies, while other writers examine the white supremacy that underlies the administration and festers in some quarters of Latinidad.
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