The Latino/a Canon and the
Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature
By Raphael Dalleo and Elena
Machado Sáez
Published by Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007
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Progressive cultural criticism often tends
to lament the political scene today as unable to live up to the ideals of the
Sixties, a nostalgia that can make the Left seem irrelevant or unable to engage
with a changing present. At the same time, creative writers today are imagining
new political projects and new relationships with the social movements of the
past. In the first study of Latino/a literature to systematically examine the
post-Sixties generation of writers, The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of
Post-Sixties Literature challenges the ways that Latino/a studies imagines
the relationship of art, politics and the market. Dalleo and Machado Sáez
engage with the major figures in the field to dispute the consensus view of
Latino/a literature from the 1960s as politically committed and resistant to
the market versus the literature of the 1990s as apolitical and assimilationist
due to its commodification. This study argues that post-Sixties writers Pedro
Pietri, Ernesto Quiñonez, Abraham Rodríguez, Junot Díaz, Angie Cruz, Cristina
Garcia, Julia Alvarez, Nilo Cruz, Chantel Acevedo, and Ana Menéndez have not
abandoned politics, but are imagining creative strategies for revitalizing
progressive thought through the market.
About
Raphael Dalleo About Elena Machado
Sáez