Full Description
2020 International Latino Book Awards Honorable Mention in Best Nonfiction (Multi-Author)
Latinx Writing Los Angeles offers a critical anthology of Los Angeles's most significant English-language and Spanish-language (in translation) nonfiction writing from the city's inception to the present. Contemporary Latinx authors, including three Pulitzer Prize winners and writers such as Harry Gamboa Jr., Guillermo GÓmez-PeÑa, and RubÉn MartÍnez, focus on the ways in which Latinx Los Angeles's nonfiction narratives record the progressive racialization and subalternization of Latinxs in the southwestern United States.
While notions of racial memory, coloniality, biopolitics, internal colonialism, cultural assimilation, Mexican or pan-Latinx cultural nationalism, and transnationalism permeate this anthology, contributors advocate the idea of a contested modernity that refuses to accept mainstream cultural impositions, proposing instead alternative ways of knowing and understanding. Featuring a wide variety of voices as well as a diversity of subgenres, this collection is the first to illuminate divergent, hybrid Latinx histories and cultures. Redefining Los Angeles's literary history and providing a new model for English, Spanish, and Latinx studies, Latinx Writing Los Angeles is an essential contribution to southwestern and borderland studies.
Contents
Acknowledgments
LA's Latina/o Phantom Nonfiction and the Technologies of Literary Secrecy
Victor Valle
Decolonizing Latina/o Nonfiction in LA's Writing
Ignacio LÓpez-Calvo and Victor Valle
Selections
1. "With the Amicable People of Ensenada de Palmas": Excerpt from Breve relaciÓn de la nueva entrada al sur, en la copiosa gentilidad de la naciÓn de los coras . . . , por el padre
Ignacio MarÍa Napoli, S.J.
2. The Public Outcry. Noteworthy Pamphlet
Francisco RamÍrez
3. The Repercussions of a Lynching
Ricardo Flores MagÓn
4. To Womankind, a Manifesto
Blanca de Moncaleano
5. Excerpt from "The Memoirs of Alfredo Cobos"
Alfredo Cobos
6. Excerpts from The Journals of AnaÏs Nin
AnaÏs Nin
7. Bert Corona's "Struggle Is the Ultimate Teacher"
JesÚs Mena
8. Beach Blanket Baja
Helena MarÍa Viramontes
9. "The 'Good Old Mission Days' Never Existed": Excerpt from The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in California
Alejandro MurguÍa
10. Light at the End of Tunnel Vision: In Memory of Gerardo VelÁzquez and Ray Navarro
Harry Gamboa Jr.
11. "Deported to the North": Excerpt from Dangerous Border Crossings: The Artist Talks Back
Guillermo GÓmez-PeÑa
12. Lights
Nylsa MartÍnez
13. Movie Version: "Hell to Eternity"
Sesshu Foster
14. Americanismo: City of Peasants, Los Angeles, California
HÉctor Tobar
15. "The Boy Left Behind": Excerpt from Enrique's Journey
Sonia Nazario
16. My Father's House
RubÉn MartÍnez
Source Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
