Spanish Language and Literature: Books

Crossing Cultures/Cruzando culturas focuses on the creation of literary works and how these works reflect the life experiences of the authors. The purpose of this book is to inspire young Mexican-American, Hispanic, and Latino people by demonstrating that education is the key to life through the example of authors who have become successful in spite of their modest beginnings.

Marc Zimmerman works from a theoretical frame of cultural, postcolonial, and diasporic studies to compare the artistic experiences and cultural production of Puerto Ricans with that of Chicanos and Cuban Americans. Zimmerman examines a spectrum of U.S. Puerto Rican artistic life, including relations with other ethnic groups and resistance to colonialism and cultural assimilation.

A first-of-its-kind book that seriously and profoundly examines what it means philosophically to be Latino and where Latinos fit in American society. Offers a fresh perspective and clearer understanding of Latin American thought and culture, rejecting answers based on stereotypes and fear.

This exploration of the development of the Spanish language in the territory that has become the United States from a sociohistorical perspective draws attention to the long tradition of multilingualism in the United States in the hope of putting to rest the myth that the United States was ever a monolingual nation.

This is the first comprehensive history of Spanish literature to be published in English since the 1970s. It brings together experts from the USA, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Together, the essays cover the full range of Spanish poetry, prose, and theatre from the early Middle Ages to the present day.

The Columbia History of Latinos in the United States Since 1960 is among the few comprehensive histories of Latinos in America. This collaborative, interdisciplinary volume provides not only cutting-edge interpretations of recent Latino history, including essays on the six major immigrant groups (Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and South Americans), but also insight into the major areas of contention and debate that characterize Latino scholarship in the early twenty-first century.

This resource describes all major aspects of the culture and civilization of Hispanic Americans living in the United States. Chapters cover such topics as: Spanish explorers and colonizers, significant documents, historic landmarks, labor and employment, women, religion, literature, art, prominent Hispanics, military, business, race, and more.

Unlike most other studies, this book presents data on transformations over time, rather than a static portrait of specific topics at particular moments. Latino-Americans are examined over this twenty-five year period in terms of their demographic structures, changing patterns of wealth and poverty, educational attainment, citizenship and voter participation, occupational structures, employment, and unemployment.

A landmark scholarly work, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States offers comprehensive, reliable, and accessible information about the fastest growing minority population in the nation. With an unprecedented scope and cutting-edge scholarship, the Encyclopedia draws together the diverse historical and contemporary experiences in the United States of Latinos and Latinas from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Central America, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

This major new edition provides the richest coverage of Spanish from around the world, covering over 300,000 words and phrases, and more than 500,000 translations.

Though now a significant ethnic group in the US, Puerto Ricans are rarely studied - and often misunderstood. Edna Acosta-Belen and Carlos Santiago change this status quo, presenting a nuanced portrait of both the community today and the trajectory of its development. The authors move deftly from Puerto Rico's colonial experience, through a series of waves of migration, to the emergence of the commuter patterns seen today.

These essays reflect a view admittedly skeptical of the movements, isms, and theories devised by many scholars in their reading of important writers. Earle prefers to see Cervantes, Miguel de Unamuno, Gabriela Mistral, and Garcia Marquez, for example, as basically autonomous. Like most great authors, they don't fit within trends. Two words in this book's subtitle - self and circumstance - signal a concept of the writer's function in Spain and Hispanic America as primarily autobiographical and historical.