Suchergebnisse

Contemporary Central American diasporic writers like Horacio Castellanos Moya, Francisco Goldman, Héctor Tobar, and Marcos McPeek Villatoro, in Senselessness (2008), The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? (2007), The Tattooed Soldier (1998), and the Romilia Chacón detective series, write in response to various forms of violence. They grapple with the image of Central America as a site of unsustainable violence, inhospitable material conditions, and unresolved historical issues that extend into the lives of Central Americans in the United States. The past is not easily dismissed, but lies at the core of transnational Central American subject formation. This essay examines how violence and impunity are closely tied in Central American diasporic texts and hold cognitive relevancy for Central Americans in and outside of the isthmus. While US Central Americans seek to understand the origins and conditions of their diaspora, writers reflect critically on Central American historiography, diaspora, and the construction of transnational "Centroamericanidades" in the twenty-first century. These writers engage in a literature of reparation that reveals the (im)possibility of repairing and re-writing or righting the past in societies where violence and impunity have been institutionalized.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Embodying Latinidad: An Overview -- Section One. Case Studies: Silent and Classic Film Era -- 1. Film Viewing in Latino Communities, 1896–1934: Puerto Rico as Microcosm -- 2. Lupe Vélez: Queen of the B's -- 3. Lupe Vélez Regurgitated: Cautionary, Indigestion-Causing Ruminations on "Mexicans" in "American" Toilets Perpetrated While Covetously Screening "Veronica" -- Section Two. Performing Bodies: Contemporary Film and Music Media -- 4. Celia's Shoes -- 5. Salma Hayek's Frida: Transnational Latina Bodies in Popular Culture -- 6. Is Penélope to J.Lo as Culture Is to Nature? Eurocentric Approaches to "Latin" Beauties -- 7. Jennifer Lopez: The New Wave of Border Crossing -- 8. "There's My Territory": Shakira Crossing Over -- 9. "Hey, Killer": The Construction of a Macho Latina, or the Perils and Enticements of Girlfight -- Section Three . Sensational Bodies: Discourses of Latina Femininity -- 10. On the Semiotics of Lorena Bobbit -- 11. Disorderly Bodies and Discourses of Latinidad in the Elián González Story -- 12. The Body in Question: The Latina Detective in the Lupe Solano Mystery Series -- 13. La Princesa Plástica: Hegemonic and Oppositional Representations of Latinidad in Hispanic Barbie -- 14. Chusmas, Chismes, y Escándalos: Latinas Talk Back to El Show de Cristina and Laura en América -- Contributors -- Index

Cover artwork by Diane Gamboa. Credit-Click here Latinos have become the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. While the presence of Latinos and Latinas in mainstream news and in popular culture in the United States buttresses the much-heralded Latin Explosion, the images themselves are often contradictory. In Latino/a Popular Culture, Habell-Pallán and Romero have brought together scholars from the humanities and social sciences to analyze representations of Latinidad in a diversity of genres - media, culture, music, film, theatre, art, and sports - that are emerging across the nation in relation to Chicanas, Chicanos, mestizos, Puerto Ricans, Caribbeans, Central Americans and South Americans, and Latinos in Canada. Contributors include Adrian Burgos, Jr., Luz Calvo, Arlene Dávila, Melissa A. Fitch, Michelle Habell-Pallán, Tanya Katerí Hernández, Josh Kun, Frances Negron-Muntaner, William A. Nericcio, Raquel Z. Rivera, Ana Patricia Rodríguez, Gregory Rodriguez, Mary Romero, Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, Christopher A. Shinn, Deborah R. Vargas, and Juan Velasco. Cover artwork "Layering the Decades" by Diane Gamboa, 2002, mixed media on paper, 11 X 8.5". Copyright 2001, Diane Gamboa. Printed with permission