The Construction of Latina/o Literary Imaginaries

Book excerpt: This book explores the cultural and historical imaginary expressed in literary works that emphasize Latina/o world views. The essays here employ critical approaches based on discourse and cultural analyses that highlight individual and collective identity. They encompass a wide spectrum of topics that deal with border newspapers published early in the twentieth century and their function as a forum for conserving memory based on cultural values and religious beliefs; life writing and fictional rewritings of memory; autobiographical texts that emphasize the diasporic experience of immigrants; and the essay and the poetic/visual literary forms that recover border memory. The discussion of alternative life views presented here will be of interest to academics involved in the recovery of print culture and genre specialists in the area of autobiography, as well as readers who wish to become more familiar with literature from the US-Mexico border region.