This is a timely book that, through an insightful exploration of recent art (literary and visual texts) created by members of the Latinx community, places emphasis on social bonds and forms of conviviality that run counter to contemporary anti-Latinx discourse. Drawing mostly on neo-cosmopolitan approaches, this book provides a fresh slant on the Latinx stranger, as it not only exposes the processes of othering to which Latinxs are subjected, but also foregrounds their potential to imagine convivial modes of interaction that foster solidarity and social change. The themes and the level of scholarship at stake in this volume appeal to a variety of subject areas, e.g., US Latinx literature and culture, border studies and American studies, all of which are increasingly widely taught in US campuses, and to a lesser (but still significant) extent also in European and Latin American universities. Besides, its focus on pressing contemporary issues, ranging from Latinx immigration, family separation at the US-Mexico border, Latinx urban life, and Latinx politics in the US, may also appeal to non-specialist audiences who wish to learn what it means to be a Latinx politically and culturally. Formed by a team of geographically diverse contributors, some of whom are renowned writers and scholars (e.g., Norma Cantu), while others are at the beginning of promising careers, this volume takes a critical but also optimist approach to tackling some of the challenges that Latinxs, as well as other minorities around the world, are experiencing in contexts of increasing racism and other forms of hatred.

This book is an in-depth study of Latina girls, portrayed in five coming-of-age narratives by using spaces and places as hermeneutical tools. The texts under study here are Julia Alvarez's Return to Sender (2009), Norma E. Cantu's Canicula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera (1995), Mary Helen Ponce's Hoyt Street: An Autobiography (1993), and Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican (1993) and Almost a Woman (1998). Unlike most representations of Latina girls, which are characterized by cultural inaccuracies, tropes of exoticism, and a tendency to associate the host society with modernity and their girls' cultures of origin with backwardness and oppression, these texts contribute to reimagining the social differently from what the dominant imagery offers. By illustrating the vexing phenomena the characters have to negotiate on a daily basis (such as racism, sexism, and displacement), these narratives open avenues for a critical exploration of the legacies of colonial modernity. This book, therefore, not only enables an analysis of how the girls' development is shaped by these structures of power, but also shows how such legacies are reversed as the characters negotiate their identities. It breaks with the longstanding characterization of young people, and especially Latina girls, as voiceless and deprived of agency, showing readers that this youth group also has say in controlling their lifeworlds.

This book is an in-depth study of Latina girls, portrayed in five coming-of-age narratives by using spaces and places as hermeneutical tools. The texts under study here are Julia Alvarez's Return to Sender (2009), Norma E. Cantu's Canicula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera (1995), Mary Helen Ponce's Hoyt Street: An Autobiography (1993), and Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican (1993) and Almost a Woman (1998). Unlike most representations of Latina girls, which are characterized by cultural inaccuracies, tropes of exoticism, and a tendency to associate the host society with modernity and their girls' cultures of origin with backwardness and oppression, these texts contribute to reimagining the social differently from what the dominant imagery offers. By illustrating the vexing phenomena the characters have to negotiate on a daily basis (such as racism, sexism, and displacement), these narratives open avenues for a critical exploration of the legacies of colonial modernity. This book, therefore, not only enables an analysis of how the girls' development is shaped by these structures of power, but also shows how such legacies are reversed as the characters negotiate their identities. It breaks with the longstanding characterization of young people, and especially Latina girls, as voiceless and deprived of agency, showing readers that this youth group also has say in controlling their lifeworlds.