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American literature in Spanish

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Through Americas and Feminism

Lab · Class 6–12Archaeology & Discovery

The rise of Spanish-language Latino literature has been fraught with obstacles related to publication and audience. Latino/a authors have expanded audience expectations by attending to narrative innovation and design and by creating challenging reading situations. Rather than compose their narratives with an actual audience in mind, many Latino/a authors sought to write for a new, ideal audience capable of engaging with even the most complex story worlds and stylistic innovations. From the 1960s to the present, breakthrough authors who created new audiences include Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, Gloria Anzaldúa, Piri Thomas, Giannina Braschi, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Díaz, and Gilbert Hernandez have engaged a sophisticated bilingual readership in their avant-garde narratives, code-switching, serialization, and intertextual play in Spanish, Spanglish, and English. Their works, often first published in independent and academic presses, were widely taught as foundational works in the burgeoning fields of Latino Studies and Third World Feminisms; their academic following helped to create a commercial market for Latino literature.

By 2000, many more Mexican-Americans/Chicanos, Cuban-Americans, Puerto Ricans on the island and Nuyoricans on the mainland, and US immigrants from Latin America have published literature in Spanish in US trade, academic, and mainstream publishing houses. Other US based authors who either write in Spanish or who regularly use Spanish phrases in their works include: Julia Álvarez, Martín Espada, Rhina Espaillat, Nicholasa Mohr, Cristina García, Óscar Hijuelos, Cherríe Moraga, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, and Ilan Stavans.

American novels in Spanish and Spanglish

Piri Thomas's Down These Mean Streets and Giannina Braschi's Yo-Yo Boing! are groundbreaking American novels for their prominent use Spanish and Spanglish and their unflinching description of urban life for Hispanic Americans. Piri Thomas was pressured to self-translate Spanish passages into English for the publication of his 1967 novel at his publisher’s insistence that the text not alienate monolingual English readers. Nonetheless, the book was banned by New York City public schools because it was perceived, as reported by The New York Times in 1971, as "a threat to their values. Many... who assail 'Down These Mean Streets' indicate they do so not so much because it portrays life in New York's Puerto Rican community as because the portrayal includes vulgarities and descriptions of sexual acts". Three decades years later, Giannina Braschi's 1998 novel, featured entire chapters written in untranslated Spanish and extensive dramatic dialogues that mixed Spanish, Spanglish, and English. Though Braschi's bilingual work also used vulgarities and addressed social justice issues such as domestic violence, racism, discrimination, sexual harassment directly, Yo-Yo Boing! book was not censored. However, critic Christopher Gonzalez observes that non-Spanish speaking reviewers considered the work 'an affront'". Gonzalez notes that bilingual reviewers, such as David William Foster in Review of Contemporary Fiction praised Yo-Yo Boing! for its "superb exploration for the lived experiences of Hispanics." Other critics such as Harold Augenbraum, Ilan Stavans, Doris Sommer, and Adriana Estill have used the phrase "a tour de force" to describe the novel

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