This book presents a study of the figure of the stranger in US Latinx literary and cultural forms, ranging from contemporary novels through essays to film and transborder art activism. The focus on this abject figure is twofold: first, to explore its potential to expose the processes of othering to which Latinxs are subjected; and, second, to foreground its epistemic response to neocolonial structures and beliefs. Thus, this book draws on relevant sociological literature on the stranger to unveil the political and social processes behind the recognition of Latinxs as ‘out of place.’ On the other hand, and most importantly, this volume follows the path of neo-cosmopolitan approaches to bring to the fore processes of interrelatedness, interaction, and conviviality that run counter to criminalizing discourses around Latinxs. Through an engagement with these theoretical tenets, the goal of this book is to showcase the role of the Latinx stranger as a cosmopolitan mediator that transforms walls into bridges.
"Table of Contents Contributor Information List of Figures Introduction: ""Latinx Strangers Revisited: From Othering to Effecting Social Change"" Esther Álvarez López and Andrea Fernández-García Transforming Empathy into Extratextual Action: The Latina Writer as Stranger and Mediator in García McCall’s All the Stars Denied Vanessa de Veritch Woodside (University of Washington, Tacoma) ""Hospitality and Borders in Oscar Cásares Where We Come From"" Ana Manzanas (University of Salamanca) ""Beyond the Wall: Latinx Strangers and Cosmopolitanism in Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels"" Macarena García-Avello (University of Cantabria) ""Inhabiting Nepantla: The Stranger in Contemporary Chicana Fiction"" Norma E. Cantú (Trinity University, TX) 5. ""The Cosmopolitanism of Latinx Natality in Jennine Capó Crucet’s Make Your Home Among Strangers and My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education"" Michael Grafals (Florida State University) 6. ""Strangers in the City: Cosmopolitan Strangers and Transnational Urbanism in the Literary Imagination of Valeria Luiselli"" Alejandro Ramírez (Washington State University) 7. ""Hostipitality and Solidarity in Ivannia Villalobos-Vindas' Casa de tierra ajena"" Ewa Antoszek (Marie Curie-Skłodowska University) 8. ""Humanizing the Wall: Cosmopolitan Artistic Interventions on the US-Mexico Border"" Mª Jesús Castro Dopacio (University of Oviedo) Index"
"Esther Álvarez-López is Associate Professor of American Literature at the University of Oviedo, Spain. She has published on ethnic literatures, gender, and intersectionality. Her latest publications are ""Identity, De-colonization and Cosmopolitanism in (Afro)Latina Artists’ Spoken Word Performances"" (2021) and ""Strangers, Persisters, and Killjoys: Confronting Gender Inequality through Performance Poetry"" (Routledge 2022). Andrea Fernández-García is Assistant Professor at the University of Oviedo, Spain. She studies the relationship between gender, space and decoloniality in US Latina literature. She is the author of Geographies of Girlhood in US Latina Writing: Decolonizing Spaces and Identities (2020), among other publications."
