Dance between two cultures
Subtitle: Latino Caribbean literature written in the United States
By: William Luis.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Nashville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 352
Subjects: American literature -- Caribbean American authors -- History and criticism; American literature -- West Indian American authors -- History and criticism; American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; West Indian Americans -- Intellectual life; Caribbean Americans -- Intellectual life; Ethnic groups in literature; Immigrants in literature; Minorities in literature; Ethnicity in literature; West Indies -- Intellectual life
Description: In Dance Between Two Cultures, William Luis analyzes the most salient and representative narrative and poetic works of the newest literary movement to emerge in Spanish American and U.S. literatures. The book is divided into three sections, focused on representative Puerto Rican American, Cuban American, and Dominican American authors.

Luis traces the writers' origins and influences from the nineteenth century to the present, focusing especially on the contemporary works of Oscar Hijuelos, Julia Alvarez, Cristina Garcia, and Piri Thomas, among others. While engaging in close readings of the texts, Luis places them in a broader social, historical, political, and racial perspective to expose the tension between text and context.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-335) and index.
Table of contents: title: Setting new roots : Latino Caribbean literature in the United States; title: Puerto Rican American poetry : street rhythms and voices of the people; title: Puerto Ricans in New York : memoirs of Bernardo Vega and Piri Thomas's Down these mean streets; title: Cuban American poetry : the Cuban American divide; title: Master codes of Cuban and Cuban-American culture : Oscar Hijuelos's The mambo kings play songs of love and Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban; title: Dominican American poetry : culture in the middest; title: Search for identity in Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia girls lost their accents; title: Postmeditation on Latino, race, and identity.