There have been quite a few end of the year book lists posted lately, for obvious reasons (it is December after all). While I normally enjoy such fare, especially right before the MLA convention where I can usually pick up many of the books on those lists. This year, however, something has kept me from enjoying my yearly book browsing. I'm not sure why I haven't noticed this before, but there seem to be a profusion of lists out there that conflate the term Latin American with Latino. And it's really starting to get on my nerves...
Here's why: the terms are not interchangeable. In the strictest sense, Latino literature is literature written in English, usually from within the United States, by someone who has Latin American heritage. This kind of literature - like African-American lit, Asian-American lit, or other hyphenated lit - is influence by multiple cultures, but written in English. And that's an important point. Language matters, as does point of origin, at least when we are discussing labels. (I have some very strong opinions about labeling texts and how it actually does harm, but that is a topic for another day.) Latin American literature, on the other hand, is literature written in Spanish, Portuguese, Creole, or French from anywhere in the Americas (though, interestingly, most people do not include Quebecois literature in this designation). Though most of this literature comes from outside the United States, there are writers who write in Spanish or Portuguese within the US who are still Latin American writers, not American or Latino. (See Reinaldo Arenas for a good example of this - and read him, as his work is striking and etherial).
Some examples will make all this a bit easier to conceptualize. First, let's think about Latin American texts. Academics love to categorize, so this term lumps together national texts based on historical and geographic similarities. The term Latin American allows us to compare - we can look at Colombian and Brazilian and Haitian texts together as part of a shared, interconnected whole that encompasses a certain block of countries bound by their place in our Western view of the world. These countries and their literature are often lumped together this way because 1) they don't write in English, 2) they are parting of the "Developing World", and 3) they seem to have little influence on 'our' own literature (which is a complete falsehood, but one that is perpetuated by translation issues and the otherness of certain texts). We do the same thing to Asian literature or African literature. Literature from Korea is different from what comes out of Japan or India or China, but we tend to lump it all together as Asian. Hell, we even do this to European literature, though the value we place on European lit and the way we treat it in publishing or in school is very different to how we approach, say, African lit (which in itself is controversial because of the way European languages are used as part of colonial oppression in Africa).
So when the Huffington Post writes a list of "8 Latino Authors Everyone Should Know" that only mentions authors writing in Spanish, they are actually listing Latin American authors. All the writers cited wrote in Spanish, all of them are part of the Latin American Literary Boom, and all are hugely important in their home countries. Calling them Latino seem to be an erstwhile, better-late-than-never attempt to all of a sudden recognize the importance of Latin American authors on North American lit. It's a way to include them in 'our' literary legacy. [Side note: many of these authors are HUGELY important in the literary legacy of the United States, but most people outside of actual writers or academics don't normally know that. That's what makes lists like this so frustrating - it becomes a weird kind of cultural appropriation.]
So what does a Latino text actually look like? A different list from the Huffington Post, "23 Books By Latinos that Might Just Change Your Life," intermingles books written in English with books in translation from both Spanish and Portuguese. I have many problems with this list (mostly because it is very heavy on certain authors and elevates some books that really aren't that good), but what really strikes me is how it seems to be saying that the only defining factor for these authors is their 'shared' Latin American heritage. It ignores the differences that make Latino texts separate from Latin American works. Latin American authors have well defined national allegiances. They may write about differing political opinions, come from different economic backgrounds, or set their stories in Paris, Antarctica, or the Moon, but they write as Argentines, as Chileans, as Dominicans. Latinos, too, write from a national standpoint, even though they come from a hyphenated background. Though most Latinos will insist they are just as much Cuban as American, just as much Mexican as New Mexican, the United States is their literary place of origin. Latino texts are national texts in terms of experience and language just as much as they are transnational texts in terms of culture and heritage. Latinos, whatever else they are, are citizens (legal or not) of the United States.
And, just so I can be another of those annoying list compliers, I'll be adding my own top 10 list(s) in my next post. My 10 Favorite Latin American Books and My 10 Favorite Latino Books.
No comments:
Post a Comment