In a bumpy, anxiety-producing plane ride across the Straits of Florida to Cuba in 1979, graduate student Gerald Poyo knew his life would either end that day in the World War II-era prop airplane or change forever. He survived the trip, and his ten-day visit solidified his academic research and confirmed his career as a history professor. In this wide-ranging examination of his relatives’ migrations in the Western Hemisphere—the Americas—over five generations, Poyo uses his training as a historian to unearth his family’s stories. Beginning with his great-great grandfather’s flight from Cuba to Key West in 1869, this is also about the loss of a beloved homeland. His father was Cuban; his mother was from Flint, Michigan. Poyo himself was six months old when his parents took him to Bogotá, Colombia. He celebrated his eighth birthday in New Jersey and his tenth in Venezuela. He was 12 when he landed in Buenos Aires, where he spent his formative years before returning to the United States for college. “My heart belonged to the South, but somehow I knew I could not escape the North,” he writes. Transnationalism shaped his life and identity. Divided into two parts, the first section traces his parents and ancestors as he links their stories to impersonal movements in the world—Spanish colonialism, Cuban nationalism, United States expansionism—that influenced their lives. The second half explores how exile, migration and growing up a “hemispheric American, a borderless American” impacted his own development and stimulated questions about poverty, religion and relations between Latin America and the United States. Ultimately, this thought-provoking memoir unveils the universal desire for a safe, stable life for one’s family.

A comprehensive collection of Latino writing of fiction and nonfiction works in English.

Despite their literary and cultural significance, Afro-Latino memoirs have been marginalized in both Latino and African American studies. Trent Masiki remedies this problem by bringing critical attention to the understudied African American influences in Afro-Latino memoirs published after the advent of the Black Arts movement. Masiki argues that these memoirs expand on the meaning of racial identity for both Latinos and African Americans. Using interpretive strategies and historical methods from literary and cultural studies, Masiki shows how Afro-Latino memoir writers often turn to the African American experience as a model for articulating their Afro-Latinidad. African American literary production, expressive culture, political ideology, and religiosity shaped Afro-Latino subjectivity more profoundly than typically imagined between the post-war and post-soul eras. Masiki recovers this neglected history by exploring how and why Black nationalism shaped Afro-Latinidad in the United States. This book opens the border between the canons of Latino and African American literature, encouraging greater intercultural solidarities between Latinos and African Americans in the era of Black Lives Matter.

Scholar Gerald Poyo looks back on the transnational experiences that shaped his family and life, including the loss of a Cuban homeland over several generations and growing up in Latin America as the son of a privileged American corporate employee.

"In a bumpy, anxiety-producing plane ride across the Straits of Florida to Cuba in 1979, graduate student Gerald Poyo knew his life would either end that day in the World War II-era prop airplane or change forever. He survived the trip, and his ten-day visit solidified his academic research and confirmed his career as a history professor. In this wide-ranging examination of his relatives' migrations in the Western Hemisphere -- the Americas -- over five generations, Poyo uses his training as a historian to unearth his family's stories. Beginning with his great-great grandfather's flight from Cuba to Key West in 1869, this is also about the loss of a beloved homeland. His father was Cuban; his mother was from Flint, Michigan. Poyo himself was six months old when his parents took him to Bogotâa, Colombia. He celebrated his eighth birthday in New Jersey and his tenth in Venezuela. He was 12 when he landed in Buenos Aires, where he spent his formative years before returning to the United States for college. 'My heart belonged to the south, but somehow I knew I could not escape the north,' he writes. Transnationalism shaped his life and identity. Divided into two parts, the first section traces his parents and ancestors as he links their stories to impersonal movements in the world -- Spanish colonialism, Cuban nationalism, United States expansionism -- that influenced their lives. The second half explores how exile, migration and growing up a 'hemispheric American, a borderless American' impacted his own development and stimulated questions about poverty, religion and relations between Latin America and the United States. Ultimately, this thought-provoking memoir unveils the universal desire for a safe, stable life for one's family"

This three-volume encyclopedia describes and explains the variety and commonalities in Latina/o culture, providing comprehensive coverage of a variety of Latina/o cultural forms—popular culture, folk culture, rites of passages, and many other forms of shared expression. In the last decade, the Latina/o population has established itself as the fastest growing ethnic group within the United States, and constitutes one of the largest minority groups in the nation. While the different Latina/o groups do have cultural commonalities, there are also many differences among them. This important work examines the historical, regional, and ethnic/racial diversity within specific traditions in rich detail, providing an accurate and comprehensive treatment of what constitutes "the Latino experience" in America. The entries in this three-volume set provide accessible, in-depth information on a wide range of topics, covering cultural traditions including food; art, film, music, and literature; secular and religious celebrations; and religious beliefs and practices. Readers will gain an appreciation for the historical, regional, and ethnic/racial diversity within specific Latina/o traditions. Accompanying sidebars and "spotlight" biographies serve to highlight specific cultural differences and key individuals.

The Routledge Handbook of Latinx Life Writing provides an in‐depth introduction to Latinx life writing, taking a historical approach to the study of a variety of key Latinx life writers, genres, and thematic concerns. This volume includes chapters on fundamental genres of Latinx life writing including memoir, autobiography, oral history, testimonio, comics and graphic texts, poetry of protest, and theatre to more fully depict the breadth, dynamism, and vibrancy of Latinx life writing. Latinx people continuously engaged in the empowering act of telling their stories and narrating their lives, producing writing that at various times and in various ways expressed their joy, expressed their rage and anguish, and ultimately, asserted their subjectivity all the while indelibly contributing to the American literary landscape.

Ensconced in the tight kinship network of a local household in Oaxaca, Mexico, the author embarked on a challenging study of a radical ethnic political movement, COCEI. An anthropologist who married a Zapotec Women, the author chronicles his fieldwork in this memoir. His research is interwoven with his personal experiences, addressing the political and ethical dilemmas of contemporary ethnography. Campbell's informants are internationally known politicians, poets, and painters who live in Juchitán, a large city controlled by indigenous activists. While adopting aspects of the postmodern critique of ethnography, the author proposes and illustrates a collaborative form of research based on partisan political commitment. Through a candid and intimate account, he portrays his informants and research site, and his direct involvement in Zapotec society. The book is both a highly readable ethnography of Southern Mexico and a contribution to debates about current anthropology.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Historical Latinidades and Archival Encounters -- 1. The Errant Latino: Irisarri, Central Americanness, and Migration's Intention -- 2. Historicizing Nineteenth-Century Latina/o Textuality -- 3. On the Borders of Independence: Manuel Torres and Spanish American Independence in Filadelphia -- 4. From Union Officers to Cuban Rebels: The Story of the Brothers Cavada and Their American Civil Wars -- 5. Almost-Latino Literature: Approaching Truncated Latinidades

The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature presents over forty essays by leading and emerging international scholars of Latino/a literature and analyses: Regional, cultural and sexual identities in Latino/a literature Worldviews and traditions of Latino/a cultural creation Latino/a literature in different international contexts The impact of differing literary forms of Latino/a literature The politics of canon formation in Latino/a literature. This collection provides a map of the critical issues central to the discipline, as well as uncovering new perspectives and new directions for the development of this literary culture.