Looking Out, Looking In: Anthology of Latino Poetry

$27.95

Edited by William Luis

ISBN: 978-1-55885-761-2
Category: Forthcoming Titles Poetry
Published: May 31, 2013
Bind: Trade Paperback
Pages: 320

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The poems included in this comprehensive anthology run the gamut of styles and themes, but all are by Latinos writing from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Some deal with issues specific to the Hispanic experience, such as displacement, identity and language. In “Who Is Going to Tell Me?,” Puerto Rican / Dominican Sandra María Esteves chastises her Spanish ancestors “who captured my mother as slave, stripped her naked, / plowed treasures from her shores,” and wonders where she can learn about her African forefathers: “In whose library will I find their books? Tales of their lives?”

Others ponder universal concerns, such as love, family and humanity. In “Letter to Arturo,” Mexican-American poet Lucha Corpi pens a song of love to her son: “You’ve hardly left / and already I miss the light / caress of your hands / on my hair, / and your laughter and your tears, / and all your questions / about seas, / moons and deserts. / And all my poems / are tying themselves together / in my throat.”

More than 80 Latino poets are represented in this wide-ranging collection that focuses on poetry from the four largest groups in the United States: Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans and Dominican Americans. In his introduction, scholar William Luis gives an overview of the origins of Latino literature in the United States, providing historical, political and cultural frameworks for these groups and their writings.

Included are distinguished poets such as Julia Álvarez, Gloria Anzaldúa, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Martín Espada and Pedro Pietri, as well as less well-known writers who deserve more recognition. Whether writing about timeless issues or themes specific to their community, the poets in this volume craft a multilayered look at what it means to be Latino in the United States. Looking Out, Looking In is an indispensable and welcome addition to American and Latino literatures.

 

Looking Out, Looking In is a definitive anthology of Latino poetry…[this] scholarly yet accessible overview of the evolution and major concerns of the movement is required reading for serious students.”
McAllen Monitor

WILLIAM LUIS is the Chancellor’s Professor of Spanish at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of numerous books, including Lunes de Revolución: Literatura y cultura (2003); Culture and Customs of Cuba (2001); Dance Between Two Cultures: Latino Carribean Literature Written in the United States (1997); Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative (1990). Born and raised in New York City, Luis did all of his post-secondary education outside of his immediate environment. He received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Binghamton, an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a second M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University (1980). His research interests are nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American literature, contemporary Spanish American, Caribbean, Afro-Hispanic, and Latino literature.

Learn more by visiting his faculty page.