Americas

Americas
Author: A. Robert Lee
Publisher: Universitat de València
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2017-07-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 8491341676

'Americas: Selected Verse and Vignette' seeks to give expression in poem and metaphor to the United States as a personally lived and engaged-with culture. The span, accordingly, involves both site and journey, a roster of art, people, different authorships, film, music, photography, cities, society. Prose sketches both serious and antic as well as verse. American Studies with a difference.

Four Books, One Latino Life

Four Books, One Latino Life
Author: Ignacio F. Rodeño Iturriaga
Publisher: Universitat de València
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2021-02-19
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 8491347585

Acclaimed by many as one of the most gifted essayists and stylists in American letters these last few decades, Richard Rodriguez has left an indelible imprint on the tradition of autobiographical writing of the nation. Rodeño’s study of the four installments of Rodriguez’s self-writing offers an insightful and perspicacious analysis of the evolution and the most controversial elements in this Chicano writer’s production so far. Delving deeply into issues of racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, religious background, various types of hybridity, and different forms of socio-cultural adaptation, this book presents all kinds of incisive observations about the contested space(s) that “minority” self-writers are often pushed to occupy in the American tradition of the genre.

Indigenizing the Classroom

Indigenizing the Classroom
Author: Anna M. Brígido Corachán
Publisher: Universitat de València
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2021-02-04
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 8491347496

In the past four decades Native American/First Nations Literature has emerged as a literary and academic field and it is now read, taught, and theorized in many educational settings outside the United States and Canada. Native American and First Nations authors have also broadened their themes and readership by exploring transnational contexts and foreign realities, and through translation into major and minor languages, thus establishing creative networks with other literary communities around the world. However, when their texts are taught abroad, the perpetuation of Indian stereotypes, mystifications, and misconceptions is still a major issue that non-Native readers, students, and teachers continue to struggle with. To counter such distorted representations and neo/colonialist readings, this book presents a strategic selection of critical case studies that set specific texts within cross-cultural contexts wherein Native-based methodologies and key concepts are placed at the center of the reading practice. The challenging role of teachers and researchers as potential intermediaries and responsible disseminators of what Gayatri C. Spivak calls “transnational literacy” as well as the reception of Native North American works, contexts, and themes by international readers thus becomes a primary focus of attention. This volume provides a set of critical analyses and practical resources that may enable teachers outside the United States and Canada to incorporate Native American/First Nations literature and related cultural and historical texts into their teaching practices and current research interests in a creative, decolonizing, and responsible manner.

La Llorona

La Llorona
Author: Nephtalí de León
Publisher: Universitat de València
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2020-07-28
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 8491346376

Nephtalí De León is a USA born and raised Chicano former migrant worker that became a Poet/Painter/Author/and Playwright. He has been published in several countries with his poetry translated into twelve languages. Growing up in the cauldron of borderland conflicts between USA and Mexico, by the edge of the river that divides both countries, the Rio Grande, he is no stranger to the myths, legends, and stories that form the world view of his multicultural native people. Present day native American migrants have been labeled and treated as strangers in their ancient homelands. Those who appropriated their lands now call them illegals, undocumented invaders. They administer their presence with such legal definitions in the courts of their own invention. It is in this arena that the author presents a timeless legend of a tortured and maligned spirit that refuses to die. The legend of La Llorona begins 500 years ago when invaders first came to the American continent. Reality went beyond surreal, and the Victim became the Culprit, was punished and condemned to wander unto eternity in hopeless pain for her crime, the worst any one can be accused of – the drowning of her own children! This centuries old legend is very much alive. Everybody knows her name – La Llorona.

Truths Up His Sleeve: The Times of Michael Cacoyannis

Truths Up His Sleeve: The Times of Michael Cacoyannis
Author: John Howard
Publisher: Universitat de València
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2022-04-13
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 8491349588

This first critical biography of radio broadcaster, stage director, and auteur filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis examines his prolific body of work within the socio-political context of his times. Best known as a bold modernist for triple-Oscar-winner ‘Zorba the Greek’, Michael likewise was hailed as an astute classicist for his inventive interpretations of Euripides. Working across several continents and languages, he forwarded feminist, humanist, and pacifist agendas, as he further innovated crafty LGBT narratives of unprecedented artistry and complexity. Despite intense persecution during the Cold War red scare and lavender scare, his casts and crews of frugal cosmopolitans critiqued racism, militarism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Avoiding censorship, job loss, and jail, Michael thereby laid foundations for the 1990s new queer cinema and set the stage for empowering dramas of socio-economic justice in the third millennium. Over his long life and productive career, Michael exposed and espoused the vital truths up his sleeve.

Epics of the Americas

Epics of the Americas
Author: William Allegrezza
Publisher: Universitat de València
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2018-05-09
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 8491342028

Whitman wanted to bolster the American democratic spirit by creating a democratic literature through his Leaves of Grass, he also wanted to create something epic, so he crafted a new form, the lyric-epic. Pablo Neruda wrote Canto general as a foundational text for communism in Latin America. In both books, these poets want to politicize the reader, Whitman for democracy and Neruda for communism, both of which have become foundational poets for their countries over time.

Benjamin Drew

Benjamin Drew
Author: Vicent Cucarella Ramon
Publisher: Universitat de València
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2021-12-20
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 8491349138

Benjamin Drew’s "North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada" (1856) is a collection of his interviews with former slaves living in Canada who had escaped from the United States, and an invaluable example of the transnational abolitionist movement’s political agenda. These edited oral accounts show how these runaways turned into African Canadians and reconfigured new meanings of Blackness in Canada, set out the foundations of a Black Canadian sense of attachment, and eventually helped to reshape North America by contributing to the birth of the Canadian nation-state.

Forgotten Futures, Colonized Pasts

Forgotten Futures, Colonized Pasts
Author: Cara A. Kinnally
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2019-05-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1684481228

Forgotten Futures, Colonized Pasts traces the existence of forgotten histories of inter-American alliance-making, transnational community formation, and intercultural collaboration between Mexican and Anglo American elites. Using close readings of literary texts, including novels, diaries, letters, newspapers, political essays, and travel narratives produced by nineteenth-century writers throughout Greater Mexico, Kinnally brings to light how elite Mexicans and Mexican Americans defined themselves and their relationship with Spain, Mexico, the United States, and Anglo America in the nineteenth century.

Learning To Be American

Learning To Be American
Author: Rubén Peinado Abarrio
Publisher: Universitat de València
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2017-07-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 8491341587

Pocos novelistas contemporáneos han analizado la cultura americana con el detalle con el que lo ha hecho Richard Ford en su trilogía sobre Frank Bascombe: 'The Sportswriter', 'Independence Day' y 'The Lay of the Land'. Un tríptico sobre la idiosincrasia de la sociedad norteamericana expuesto por uno de los narradores más meticulosos de la nación. Este libro se aventura en un territorio sin explorar, revelando cómo el singular sabor americano de las novelas de Frank Bascombe también surge de escenarios peculiares y de los personajes marginales, que proponen modelos de identidad alternativos. Esta obra redescubre la esencia del principal proyecto novelístico de Ford, desvelándolo como una fuente infinita de percepciones para cualquier lector interesado en la gente, los mitos y las narrativas que construyen el ser americano.