Cosmopolitan Strangers in US Latinx Literature and Culture

Building Bridges, Not Walls

Esther Álvarez-López, Andrea Fernández-García, Esther Álvarez-López, Andrea Fernández-García

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781000837056
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire nord-américaine

This book presents a study of the figure of the stranger in US Latinx literary and cultural forms, ranging from contemporary novels through essays to film and transborder art activism. The focus on this abject figure is twofold: first, to explore its potential to expose the processes of othering to which Latinxs are subjected; and, second, to foreground its epistemic response to neocolonial structures and beliefs. Thus, this book draws on relevant sociological literature on the stranger to unveil the political and social processes behind the recognition of Latinxs as 'out of place.' On the other hand, and most importantly, this volume follows the path of neo-cosmopolitan approaches to bring to the fore processes of interrelatedness, interaction, and conviviality that run counter to criminalizing discourses around Latinxs. Through an engagement with these theoretical tenets, the goal of this book is to showcase the role of the Latinx stranger as a cosmopolitan mediator that transforms walls into bridges.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Latinx Strangers Revisited: From Othering to Effecting Social Change
• 1 Transforming Empathy into Extratextual Action: The Latina Writer as Stranger and Mediator in García McCall’s All the Stars Denied
• 2 Hospitality and Borders in Oscar Cásares’ Where We Come From
• 3 Beyond the Wall: Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels
• 4 Inhabiting Nepantla: The Stranger in Contemporary Chicana Fiction
• 5 The Cosmopolitanism of Latinx Natality in Jennine Capó Crucet’s Make Your Home Among Strangers and My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education
• 6 Strangers in the City: Cosmopolitan Strangers and Transnational Urbanism in the Literary Imagination of Valeria Luiselli
• 7 Hostipitality and Solidarity in Ivannia Villalobos Vindas’ Casa en tierra ajena
• 8 Humanizing the Wall: Cosmopolitan Artistic Interventions on the US–Mexico Border
• Index