Themes

=Introduction= It's not easy to organize a course on Latino/a literature! Where do we begin? When do we begin? How far do we go? Where do we stop? What's sufficient coverage? Since this is a humanities class, we can't simply read some good stories and study some poetry. Instead, we have to relate these works of literature to the society that produced them the United States which means we have to understand something of American history and its involvement in the histories of other places such as Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico as these relate to immigration processes. We want to read literature, understand where it comes from, what ideas it expresses, and what messages, meanings, lesson it holds for us. Good literature moves us intellectually, emotionally and spiritually - even if we sometimes find the work difficult, or 'foreign' or objectionable.

One way to think about Latina/o Literature is geographically. We could simply read books from different regions of the US where latino/a writers have lived and worked. Another way to think about this literature is to read books historically. We could start with the earliest examples of Latino/a literature and work our way to NOW. Or, we could look at some themes that seem to be common to different writers, and that are quintessentially American: identity, the relationships people have to home places, social and political change.

What do you think? How would you organize our reading for the semester?