Dr. Luis Rafael Sánchez, a.k.a. "Wico" Sánchez is a Puerto Rican essayist, novelist, and short-story author who is widely considered one of the island's most outstanding contemporary playwrights. Possibly his best known play is La Pasión según Antígona Pérez, a tragedy based on the life of Olga Viscal Garriga.
Puerto Rican literature is the body of literature produced by writers of Puerto Rican descent. It evolved from the art of oral storytelling. Written works by the indigenous inhabitants of Puerto Rico were originally prohibited and repressed by the Spanish colonial government.
Caribbean literature is the literature of the various territories of the Caribbean region. Literature in English from the former British West Indies may be referred to as Anglo-Caribbean or, in historical contexts, as West Indian literature. Most of these territories have become independent nations since the 1960s, though some retain colonial ties to the United Kingdom. They share, apart from the English language, a number of political, cultural, and social ties which make it useful to consider their literary output in a single category. The more wide-ranging term "Caribbean literature" generally refers to the literature of all Caribbean territories regardless of language—whether written in English, Spanish, French, Hindustani, or Dutch, or one of numerous creoles.
Latin American poetry is the poetry written by Latin American authors. Latin American poetry is often written in Spanish, but is also composed in Portuguese, Mapuche, Nahuatl, Quechua, Mazatec, Zapotec, Ladino, English, and Spanglish. The unification of Indigenous and imperial cultures produced a unique and extraordinary body of literature in this region. Later with the introduction of African slaves to the new world, African traditions greatly influenced Latin American poetry. Many great works of poetry were written in the colonial and pre-colonial time periods, but it was in the 1960s that the world began to notice the poetry of Latin America. Through the modernismo movement, and the international success of Latin American authors, poetry from this region became increasingly influential.
Latino poetry is a branch of American poetry written by poets born or living in the United States who are of Latin American origin or descent and whose roots are tied to the Americas and their languages, cultures, and geography.
Frederick Luis Aldama is an American author, editor, and academic. He is the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and founder and director of the Latinx Pop Lab at the University of Texas, Austin. At UT Austin is also affiliate faculty in Latino Media Arts & Studies and LGBTQ Studies. He continues to hold the title Distinguished University Professor as adjunct professor at The Ohio State University. He teaches courses on Latinx pop culture, especially focused on the areas of comics, TV, film, animation, and video games in the departments of English and Radio-Television-Film at UT Austin. At the Ohio State University he was Distinguished University Professor, Arts & Humanities Distinguished Professor of English, University Distinguished Scholar, and Alumni Distinguished Teacher as well as recipient of the Rodica C. Botoman Award for Distinguished Teaching and Mentoring and the Susan M. Hartmann Mentoring and Leadership Award. He was also founder and director of the award-winning LASER/Latinx Space for Enrichment Research and founder and co-director of the Humanities & Cognitive Sciences High School Summer Institute. In has been inducted into the National Academy of Teachers, National Cartoonist Society, the Texas Institute of Letters, the Ohio State University's Office of Diversity & Inclusion Hall of Fame, and as board of directors for The Academy of American Poets. He sits on the boards for American Library Association Graphic Novel and Comics Round Table, BreakBread Literacy Project, and Ad Astra Media. He is founder and director of UT Austin's BIPOC POP: Comics, Gaming & Animation Arts Expo & Symposium as well as Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Latinx Pop Magazine.
Ilan Stavans is an American writer and academic. He writes and speaks on American, Hispanic, and Jewish cultures. He is the author of Quixote (2015) and a contributor to the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (2010). He was the host of the syndicated PBS show Conversations with Ilan Stavans, which ran from 2001 to 2006.
San Diego State University Press is a university press that is part of San Diego State University, with noted specializations in Border Studies, Critical Theory, Latin American Studies, Cultural Studies, and comics. It is the oldest university press in the California State University system. It presently publishes books under two rubrics: CODEX, focused on critical theory, and surTEXT, focused on Latin American/Transamerican Cultural Studies. In 2006, SDSU Press also inaugurated Hyperbole Books, specializing in "publishing cutting-edge, over-the-top experiments in critical theory, literary criticism and graphic narrative."
McOndo is a Latin American literary movement that breaks with the magical realism mode of narration, and counters it with languages borrowed from mass media. The literature of McOndo presents urban Latin American life, in opposition to the fictional rural town of Macondo.
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican poet, novelist, dramatist, and scholar. Her notable works include Empire of Dreams (1988), Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) and United States of Banana (2011).
James Phelan is an American writer and literary scholar of narratology. He is a third-generation Neo-Aristotelian literary critic of the Chicago School whose work builds on and refines the work of Wayne C. Booth, with a focus on the rhetorical aspects of narrative. He is Distinguished University Professor of English at the Ohio State University.
The female epic is a concept in literary criticism that seeks to expand generic boundaries by identifying ways in which women authors have adapted the masculine epic tradition to express their own heroic visions.
Caribbean poetry is vast and rapidly evolving field of poetry written by people from the Caribbean region and the diaspora.
Marie-Laure Ryan is an independent literary scholar and critic. She has written several books and articles on narratology, fiction, and cyberculture and has been awarded several times for her work. She attended the University of Geneva to study literature as an undergraduate, before moving to the United States in 1968. attending graduate school at the University of Utah, where she received her M.A. in Linguistics and German, alongside a Ph.D in French. She later obtained a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of California San Diego.
American literature in Spanish in the United States dates back as 1610 when the Spanish explorer Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá published his epic poem Historia de Nuevo México. He was an early chronicler of the conquest of the Americas and a forerunner of Spanish-language literature in the United States given his focus on the American landscape and the customs of the people. However, it was not until the late 20th century that Spanish language literature written by Americans was regularly published in the United States.
Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) is a postmodern novel in English, Spanish, and Spanglish by Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi. The cross-genre work is a structural hybrid of poetry, political philosophy, musical, manifesto, treatise, memoir, and drama. The work addresses tensions between Anglo-American and Hispanic-American cultures in the United States.
United States of Banana (2011) is a postmodern allegorical novel by the Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi. It is a cross-genre work that blends experimental theatre, prose poetry, short story, and political philosophy with a manifesto on democracy and American life in a post-9/11 world. The book dramatizes the global war on terror and narrates the author's displacement after the attacks from her home in the Battery Park neighborhood in New York City. The work addresses Latin American immigration to the United States, Puerto Rico's colonial status, and "power imbalances within the Americas."
Latino literature is literature written by people of Latin American ancestry, often but not always in English, most notably by Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Dominican Americans, many of whom were born in the United States. The origin of the term "Latino literature" dates back to the 1960s, during the Chicano Movement, which was a social and political movement by Mexican Americans seeking equal rights and representation. At the time, the term "Chicano literature" was used to describe the work of Mexican-American writers. As the movement expanded, the term "Latino" came into use to encompass writers of various Latin American backgrounds, including Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and others.
Empire of Dreams is a postmodern poetry epic by Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi, who is considered "one of the most revolutionary voices in Latin American literature today".
Latino theatre presents a wide range of aesthetic approaches, dramatic structures, and themes, ranging from love, romance, immigration, border politics, nation building, incarceration, and social justice. Whether of a linguistic, ethnic, political, cultural or sexual nature, the plays often have a social justice component involving Latino people living in the United States. The Oxcart by René Marqués, Marisol by José Rivera, and In the Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda are examples of staged Broadway plays. There is also a strong tradition of Latino avant-garde and absurdist theatre, which double as political satires; prime examples include The Masses are Asses by Pedro Pietri and United States of Banana by Giannina Braschi.
