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Caulfield, Carlota, and Darién J. Davis, eds. A Companion to US Latino Literatures. Woodbridge, UK: Tamesis, 2007. 235 pp.
A Companion to US Latino Literatures, edited by Carlota Caulfield and Darién J. Davis, is a much welcome addition to the growing corpus of US Latina/o literature and criticism. This text compiles a variety of articles written by scholars of US Latina/o literature, who offer biographic, bibliographic and critical exposés of the literature. Pedagogically sound and reader friendly, the Companion can be used as a reference guide and/or textbook in US Latina/o literature classes as well as a resource for general readers. Providing valuable overviews of the history, demographics, and identity classifications of Latina/os in the United States, the Introduction to the Companion offers points of entry to major debates in US Latina/o Studies, covered accordingly throughout chapters of the book. Issues of language, cultural hybridity, immigration, diaspora, diversity or, more specifically, Latinidades are presented in the Introduction. Of particular interest in this book are chapters treating other Latina/o writers such as Argentines and Brazilians in the United States.
In two separate chapters of the Companion, Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez shows wide coverage of US Latino/a literature, examining, first, the development of Mexican American or Chicana/o literature from its origins to the present, and, second, a more recent Dominican American literary production, primarily situated on the US East Coast. Her chapter, titled, "Resistance, Revolution, and Representation: The Literary Production of the Mestizo/Mexican-American/Chicano," surveys texts grounded in Spanish colonial (1521-1821) and US imperialist or postGuadalupe Hidalgo Treaty (1848-Present) history. This exposé of Mexican American/Chicana/o literature includes discussion of early explorers' chronicles, setder testimonios, Spanish-language press in the Southwest, popular corridos, novels, poetry and later Chicano classics like Tomás Rivera's y no se lo trago la tierra. . . And the earth did not devour him (1971) and groundbreaking border texts such as Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) and others to date. In "Between the Island and the Tenements: New Directions in DominicanAmerican Literature," Coonrod Martínez turns to the Dominican diaspora, highlighting the increasing presence of Dominicans not only in US demographics but also in Latina/o representation. Offering useful biographical...