Reading & Composition

For the Spanish-speaking population of America, in particular those populations intent on staying the rest of their lives, the classroom is a very loaded site for discussions of identity, assimilation, agency and citizenship.  Perhaps this is because many immigrants brought with them a Latin American ideology that puts education at the core of citizenship and the national project.  Or perhaps this conception of the high school as a factory for identities and a battleground to determine which identities can be recognized is as American as apple pie.  Regardless of the origins of these ideas, they’ve become a burning question in contemporary American politics, with state legislatures banning books and attacking tenured faculty to prevent the wrong histories or identities from being taught.  In this course, we’ll study various examples of the Latino Bildungsroman, looking at how innocuous fictions about getting zits and being late to gym class could become so hotly contested.

Note: This course has an intensive formal writing component, a research component, and an average weekly reading load of approximately 100 pages.

[Link: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/04/19/neither-banned-nor-allowed-mexican-american-studies-in-limbo-in-arizona/ ]

Book List

–          Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands (2012 edition – 1879960850 )

–          Patrick Chamoiseau, Schooldays (1997 – 0803263767)

–          Junot Diaz: Oscar Wao (2007 – 1594483299)

–          Richard Rodriguez: Hunger for Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982 – 0553382519)

–          Esmerelda Santiago, “When I Was Puerto Rican” (1993 – 0679756760 )

–          William Shakespeare: The Tempest (No Fear edition – 1586638491)

Possible Films and Excerpts

–          Frontierland (Jesse Lerner/Ruben Ortiz, 1995)

–          Quinceañera (Glazer/Westmoreland, 2005)

–          Mur Murs (Agnes Varda, 1981, 85min, featuring the A.S.C.O. performance art troupe)

Shorter pieces and elective readings likely to include:

–          Rodolfo Acuña, “The Stairway to the Good Life,” from Anything But Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles (1995) and excerpts from Occupied America: a history of Chicanos (2004 edition)

–          Junot Diaz: excerpts from This is How You Lose Her (2012)

–          Guillermo Gomez-Peña, excerpts from Warrior for Gringostroika(1993) and New World Border (1996)