Abstract
This essay explores the underrepresentation of Cuban American literature in Latin@ literary studies, probing into possible explanations for its marginalization in the field. I call attention to scholarship that has tended to portray Cuban American writing as fundamentally different from other Latin@ literatures with respect to politics, ideology, and historical trajectory. I then challenge such critical approaches by foregrounding the expansion and diversity of the Cuban American corpus, which can no longer be viewed as primarily exile-oriented, politically conservative, or racially homogeneous. I highlight the importance of scholarly work across latinidades that includes Cuban American writing in conversations about transnational and diasporic identity, the rewriting of American literary history, and intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. I propose that the study of postmemory and narrative inheritance in Cuban American and other Latin@ literatures offers compelling evidence of the significant interconnections that link these diverse works.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A recurring difficulty when discussing literature by Cuban exiles and their descendants is that of naming. I have chosen to use “Cuban American” while fully recognizing the problems inherent in this label. See, for example, O’Reilly Herrera’s (2001) discussion of “the various Cuban ‘presences’ in the United States” (p. xxix).
A key work focusing on the formation of the Latin@ canon is Dalleo and Machado Sáez (2007). See also Guillory (1993).
In fact, political affiliation among Cuban Americans is undergoing a sea change; according to a recent Pew Hispanic Center report, as of 2013, 47% of Cuban American voters were registered as Republicans while 44% were registered as Democrats (Krogstad 2014).
Likewise, the “Annexations: 1811–1898” section of the 2010 Norton Anthology of Latino Literature includes selections by Varela, Heredia, and Martí.
As mentioned previously, the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage project of Arte Público Press has added vital breadth and depth to the corpus of Latin@ writing through the archival work of approximately 5000 affiliated scholars, librarians, and archivists. See https://artepublicopress.com/recovery-project/.
Throughout Impossible Returns, López (2015) leans toward a diasporic paradigm, as in this assertion about Cristina García’s The Agüero Sisters: “The author stakes her right to a Cuban imaginary rich with syncretic, hybrid symbols and redeploys it in ways that demonstrate a diasporic consciousness” (p. 179).
I discuss issues raised by these writers’ language choices in an article entitled “La lengua que se repite: Pushing the Boundaries of Cuban/American Literature” (2010).
I am grateful to Elena Machado Sáez for her insightful discussion of this website (http://annotated-oscar-wao.com/) in a presentation at the 2015 Latina/o Utopias: Futures, Forms, and the Will of Literature conference.
Thomas’s father was actually Afro-Cuban American. Antonio López (2012) documents the complex implications of Thomas’s “passing” as Afro-Puerto Rican in Unbecoming Blackness (pp. 142–151).
Rivero credits Bill Teck, Miami Herald columnist and founder of Miami-based magazine Generation Ñ, with coining the moniker.
See, for example, Raúl Rosales Herrera’s (2010) excellent article on postmemory in the works of US-born writer Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés.
I developed this idea in a presentation entitled “Postmemory, ‘CubAngst,’ and the Rewriting of Family Stories” given at the 2016 conference of the Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies.
References
Acevedo, C. 2013. Chantel Acevedo (author’s website), 5 March. http://www.chantelacevedo.com/author.html.
Álvarez Borland, I. 1998. Cuban-American Literature of Exile: From Person to Persona. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Behar, R., ed. 1995. Bridges to Cuba/Puentes a Cuba. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Blanco, R. 2012. Red, White, and Blue: Poets on Politics. Poetry Society of America website. http://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/red_white_blue_poets_on_politics/richard_blanco/.
Bost, S., and F.R. Aparicio, eds. 2013. The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature. London: Routledge.
Bowering Delisle, J. 2011. “Genealogical nostalgia”: Second-Generation Memory and Return in Caterina Edwards’ Finding Rosa. Memory Studies 5 (2): 131–144.
Bruce-Novoa, J. 1990. Hispanic Literatures in the United States. In RetroSpace, 25–32. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press. Originally published in American Writing Today, vol. 2, ed. R. Kostelanetz, 250–261. Washington, DC: Forum Series.
Caminero-Santangelo, M. 2007. On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Castillo, A. 1986. The Mixquiahuala Letters. Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Review Press.
Chávez-Silverman, S. 2004. Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Christian, K. 1997. Show and Tell: Identity as Performance in U.S. Latina/o Fiction. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Christian, K. 2010. La lengua que se repite: Pushing the Boundaries of Cuban/American Literature. Caribe: Revista de Cultura y Literatura 13 (2): 17–38.
Cisneros, S. 2002. Caramelo. New York: Random House.
Collins, P.H. 2010. The New Politics of Community. American Sociological Review 75 (1): 7–30.
Dalleo, R., and E. Machado Sáez. 2007. The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
De Genova, N., and A.Y. Ramos-Zayas. 2003. Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship. New York: Routledge.
De Villiers, N. 2012. Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Díaz, J. 2007. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Penguin.
Di Iorio Sandín, L. 2004. Killing Spanish: Literary Essays on Ambivalent U.S. Latino/a Identity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Duany, J. 2014. Un pueblo disperso: Dimensiones sociales y culturales de la diáspora cubana. Valencia, España: Aduana Vieja.
Fivush, R., J.G. Bohanek and M. Duke. 2008. The Intergenerational Self: Subjective Perspective and Family History. In Self-Continuity: Individual and Collective Perspectives, ed. F. Sani, 131–143. New York: Psychology Press.
Grillo, E. 2000. Black Cuban, Black American: A Memoir. Houston: Arte Público Press.
Gross, T. 2013. Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco: “I Finally Felt Like I Was Home.” Fresh Air. National Public Radio, 18 February. http://www.npr.org/2013/02/18/171903179/inaugural-poet-richard-blanco-i-finally-felt-like-i-was-home.
Gruesz, K.S. 2002. Ambassadors of Culture: The Transamerican Origins of Latino Writing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Guillory, J. 1993. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hirsch, M. 1999. Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy. In Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, ed. M. Bal, J. Crewe, and L. Spitzer, 3–23. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
Hirsch, M. 2008. The Generation of Postmemory. Poetics Today 29 (1): 103–128.
Hospital, C., ed. 1988. Cuban American Writers: Los Atrevidos. Princeton, NJ: Ediciones Ellas/Linden Lane Press.
Irizarry, Y. 2016. Chicana/o and Latina/o Fiction: The New Memory of Latinidad. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Kanellos, N. 1990. A History of Hispanic Theatre in the United States: Origins to 1940. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Kanellos, N. 2007. Recovering and Re-Constructing Early Twentieth-Century Hispanic Immigrant Print Culture in the U.S. American Literary History 19(2): 438–455.
Krogstad, J.M. 2014. After Decades of GOP Support, Cubans Shifting Toward the Democratic Party. Pew Research Center. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/24/after-decades-of-gop-support-cubans-shifting-toward-the-democratic-party/.
Latino Americans. Produced by A. Bosch. 2013. Washington, DC: WETA.
Lima, L. 2007. The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural History. New York: New York University Press.
López, A. 2012. Unbecoming Blackness: The Diaspora Cultures of Afro-Cuban America. New York: New York University Press.
López, I.H. 2015. Impossible Returns: Narratives of the Cuban Diaspora. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
McNay, M. 2009. Absent Memory, Family Secrets, Narrative Inheritance. Qualitative Inquiry 15 (7): 1178–1188.
Milian, C. 2013. Latining America: Black-Brown Passages and the Coloring of Latino/a Studies. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Muñoz, E.M. 1998. Brand New Memory. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press.
Muñoz, J.E. 1999. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Muñoz, J.E. 2009. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press.
O’Reilly Herrera, A. 2001. ReMembering Cuba: Legacy of a Diaspora. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Ortiz, R. 2006. Cultural Erotics in Cuban America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ortiz Cofer, J. 1989. The Line of the Sun. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Quintana, A.E. 2006. The Future(s) of U.S. Latina Literature. Edinburgh Review 117: 16–33.
Rivero, E. 1985. Hispanic Literature in the United States: Self-Image and Conflict. Revista Chicano-Riqueña 13 (3–4): 173–192.
Rivero, E. 2005a. Cuba (in)completa: del sueño a la realidad. In Discursos desde la diáspora, 7–57. Cádiz, España: Editorial Aduana Vieja.
Rivero, E. 2005b. Introducción: La diáspora cubana y sus discursos. In Discursos desde la diáspora, 17–29. Cádiz, España: Editorial Aduana Vieja.
Rivero, E. 2009. Writing in Cuban, Living as Other: Cuban American Women Writers. In Cuban-American Literature and Art: Negotiating Identities, ed. I. Álvarez Borland and L.M.F. Bosch, 109–125. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Rodríguez, J.M. 2003. Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces. New York: New York University Press.
Rosales Herrera, R. 2010. Remembering and Imagining in Contemporary Mariel Writing: Postmemory and the Case of Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés. Caribe: Revista de Cultura y Literatura 13 (2): 53–70.
Vázquez, D.J. 2011. Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Zamora, L.P. 1997. The Usable Past: The Imagination of History in Recent Fiction of the Americas. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Christian, K.S. Weaving a larger web: Cuban American writing in the Latin@ narrative. Lat Stud 15, 268–286 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-017-0080-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-017-0080-0