Killing Spanish: Literary Essays on Ambivalent U.S. Latino/A Identity

Killing Spanish suggests that the doubles, madwomen and other raging characters that populate the pages of contemporary U.S. Latino/a literature allegorize ambivalence about both present American identity and past Caribbean and Latin American origins. The family novels Sandin explores -- ranging from work by the Cuban American Cristina Garcia to the island Puerto Rican Rosario Ferre -- uncover the split between Americanized protagonists and their families, a split usually resolved through the killing of a character representing origins. Race and class differences, and poverty, cause protagonists in work by the Nuyoricans Piri Thomas, the Dominican American Junot Diaz, and others, to embrace the street as the new Latino home. If the family novels exact the death of "Spanish" in the person of a double character, the urban fiction and poetry project the "mean" street, churning with the productive and destructive energies of ambivalence, as the landscape of the fragmented U.S. Latino/a psyche.

Lyn Di Iorio Sandin is an Assistant Professor of English at the City College of the City University of New York where she teaches courses on Caribbean and U.S. Latino/a Literatures and fiction writing.