Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature
- The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Foundations
- Part II Backgrounds
- Chapter 3 Still Looking for the Meaning of Whiteness in American Literature
- Chapter 4 From Plymouth Rock to Standing Rock
- Chapter 5 Racing Latinidad
- Chapter 6 African American Literature’s One Long Memory
- Chapter 7 Race and the Mythos of Model Minority in Asian American Literature
- Part III The Dynamics of Race and Literary Dynamics
- Part IV Rethinking American Literature
- Part V Case Studies
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To Literature
Chapter 5 - Racing Latinidad
from Part II - Backgrounds
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2024
- The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature
- The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Foundations
- Part II Backgrounds
- Chapter 3 Still Looking for the Meaning of Whiteness in American Literature
- Chapter 4 From Plymouth Rock to Standing Rock
- Chapter 5 Racing Latinidad
- Chapter 6 African American Literature’s One Long Memory
- Chapter 7 Race and the Mythos of Model Minority in Asian American Literature
- Part III The Dynamics of Race and Literary Dynamics
- Part IV Rethinking American Literature
- Part V Case Studies
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To Literature
Summary
This chapter argues that the terms “Latinx” and “latinidad” are messy signifiers that allow us to contend with Latinx’s complicated racial history. While the term Latinx continues to be controversial, and scholars such as Tatiana Flores have examined the case for cancelling latinidad, “Racing Latinidad” points to how latinidad can signify particular political commitments and affinities. Through readings of Manuel Muñoz’s What You See in the Dark (2011) and Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone (2009), this chapter illuminates how excavating racial histories outside the logic of the state is a way to summon a politics to imagine a people. Within this framework, “Racing Latinidad” ultimately argues for embracing the incoherence of latinidad as term that resists legibility and visibility and thus institutionalization and state management.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature , pp. 74 - 87Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024