Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-9knnw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-31T03:50:38.014Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 1 - Periodizing the Contemporary

Latinx Literature and Recent US History

from Part I - Shifting Coordinates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2025

William Orchard
Affiliation:
Queens College, CUNY
Get access

Summary

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.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
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

Aranda, José. “Contradictory Impulses: María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Resistance Theory, and the Politics of Chicana/o Studies.” American Literature, vol. 70, no. 3, 1998, pp. 551579.Google Scholar
Arte Publico Press. “About Us,” https://artepublicopress.com/about/. Accessed July 6, 2023.Google Scholar
Beltrán, Cristina. The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity. Oxford UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Blanco, Richard. “One Today.” Poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/one-today. Accessed July 6, 2023.Google Scholar
Capó Crucet, Jennine. My Time Among the Whites. Picador, 2019.Google Scholar
Cornejo Villavicencio, Karla. The Undocumented Americans. One World, 2019.Google Scholar
Giles, Wenona, and Hyndman, Jennifer. Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones. U of California P, 2004.Google Scholar
Gonzalez, Ray, ed. Without Discovery: A Native Response to Columbus. Broken Moon, 1992.Google Scholar
Gruesz, Kirsten Silva. “The Once and Future Latino: Notes toward a Literary History todavía para llegar.” In Contemporary U.S. Latina/o Literary Criticism, edited by Sandin, Lyn D’Orio and Perez, Richard. Macmillan, 2007, pp. 115142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harford Vargas, Jennifer. Forms of Dictatorship: Power, Narrative, and Authoritarianism in the Latina/o Novel. Oxford UP, 2018.Google Scholar
Hudson, Renee. “Jennine Capó Crucet and Post-Trump Latinx Literature.” Los Angeles Review of Books, September 3, 2019, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/jennine-capo-crucet-and-post-trump-latinx-literature/. Accessed July 6, 2023.Google Scholar
Hyde, Emily, and Wasserman, Sarah. “The Contemporary.” Literature Compass, vol. 14, no. 9, 2017, pp. 119.10.1111/lic3.12411CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machado Sáez, Elena. Market Aesthetics: The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction. U of Virginia P, 2015.Google Scholar
Muñoz, Carlos Jr.Reclaiming Our Heritages.” In Without Discovery: A Native Response to Columbus, edited by Gonzalez, Ray. Broken Moon P, 1992, pp. 6164.Google Scholar
Rincón, Belinda Linn. Bodies at War: Genealogies of Militarism in Chicana Literature and Culture. U of Arizona P, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saldívar, Ramón. “Historical Fantasy, Speculative Realism, and Postrace Aesthetics in Contemporary American Fiction.” American Literary History, vol. 23, no. 3 (Fall 2011), pp. 574599.10.1093/alh/ajr026CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varon, Alberto. “Exporting Manhood: Adaptation and the Post-NAFTA Latinx Novel.” American Literature, vol. 91, no. 4, 2019, pp. 811839.10.1215/00029831-7917320CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vigil, Ariana. Gender and Militarization in US Latina/o Cultural Production. Rutgers UP, 2014.Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

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

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×