Title: Mestizo nations : culture, race, and conformity in Latin American literature /
Authors: De Castro, Juan E., 1959-
Publisher: University of Arizona Press,
Year: 2002
Subjects: Latin American literature History and criticism.; Mestizaje in literature.; National characteristics, Latin American, in literature.; Nationalism in literature.; Literature and society Latin America.
Abstract: "In Mestizo Nations, Juan De Castro explores the construction of nationality in Latin American and Chicano literature and thought during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing on the discourse of mestizaje - which proposes the creation of a homogeneous culture out of American Indian, black, and Iberian elements - he examines a selection of texts that represenet the entire history and regional landscape of Latin American culture in its Western, indigenous, and neo-African traditions from Independence to the present. Through them, he delineates some of the ambiguities and contradictions that have beset this discourse."--Jacket.
Contents: 1. The Semantic Space of the Nation: Mestizaje, Hybridity, Transculturation, Borderlands -- 2. Latin America and the Discourse of Mestizaje: Culture, Race, and Conformity -- 3. Ricardo Palma's Tradiciones peruanas: The Limits of the Discourse of Mestizaje -- 4. Jose de Alencar's Iracema: Mestizaje and the Fictional Foundation of Brazil -- 5. Gilberto Freyre's Casa-Grande e Senzala: Mestizaje as a Family Affair -- 6. Jose Carlos Mariategui: Marxist Mestizaje -- 7. The Black Song of Los Van Van: Afrocentrism, the Discourse of Mestizaje, and Postrevolutionary Cuban Identity -- 8. Richard Rodriguez in "Borderland": The Relocation of the Discourse of Mestizaje -- 9. From Mestizaje to Multiculturalism: On Jose Maria Arguedas, New Mestizas, Demons, and the Uncanny.