Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants. Los atravesados live here: the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulato, the half-breed, the half dead; in short, those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the “normal.”

Gloria Anzaldúa, “Atravesando Fronteras/Crossing Borders,”25

In LIT 328, a diversity intensive (DI) course, we will explore contested definitions of “Latinx” ethnicity and identity, as explored in fiction, poetry, and essays by Chicana/o/x, Puerto Rican, Cuban American, Dominican American, and Salvadoran American writers. We will inevitably miss some voices and experiences, but our goal is a deeper quality of attention rather than mere collection of information. As Gloria Anzaldúa suggests, Latinx literature—as an expression of Latinx experience—invites readers into a complex, perhaps uneasy, but potentially creative space.

We may ask, with some of these writers, to what degree this “borderland” space is one that all of us know, whatever our background, social location, gender, or ethnic, racial, sexual, or cultural identity. How might reading, writing about, and discussing “Latinx literature” affect (or even effect) our awareness and understanding of diverse/transcultural/hybrid identities in our society, our institutions, our communities, our relationships, and ourselves?

Required Texts (Maymester 2021):

  • Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Aunt Lute, 1987; 25th anniv./4th ed., 2012)
  • Demetria Martínez, Mother Tongue (Ballantine, 1994)
  • Roberto Santiago. ed., Boricuas: Influential Puerto Rican Writings—An Anthology (Ballantine, 1995)
  • Ana Menéndez, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd (Grove, 2001)
  • Luis Alberto Urrea, Into the Beautiful North (Back Bay, 2009)

Recommended Resources:

  • Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (revised ed., Penguin, 2011).
  • Suzanne Bost & Frances Aparicio, eds., The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature (Routledge, 2013).
  • Marta Caminero-Santangelo, On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity (University Press of Florida, 2007).
  • Ilan Stavans, ed., The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (Norton, 2011).
  • Ilan Stavans & Lalo López Alcaraz, Latino U.S.A.: A Cartoon History (15th anniversary ed., Basic Books, 2012).

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