The Precarious Side of Puerto Rican Diaspora Literature: Understanding the Politics of Inclusion/Exclusion

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

The development of Puerto Rican diaspora literature has been informed and shaped by the politics of inclusion/exclusion on the island and the mainland. Language, location, gender, sexuality, race, class, and genre are some of the criteria that often determine if and how a literary work fits within the diaspora and/or island corpus. This panel examines the role that “género,” understood both as genre and gender, plays on the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion of diaspora letters. In addition to our panel’s non-exclusive emphasis on the production of multigenerational women authors/poets (Esmeralda Santiago, Aurora Levins Morales, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Nancy Mercado, Lydia Cortés, Migdalia Cruz), we also analyze more marginal or secondary literary genres such as political and performance poetry, theatre, and autobiographical writings—some of them produced beyond New York (the epicenter of Puerto Rican diaspora letters), such as Philadelphia and San Francisco. In the end, we seek to shed light on the more “precarious” side of diaspora letters.

Sub Track

• Latino(as) in the United States and Canada

Chair

• Marisel C Moreno, University of Notre Dame

Individual Presentations

• “The geography of their complexion:” Nuyorican Poets in the Neoliberal Dawn - Tomás Urayoán Noel, New York University

• Precariousness in Diasporic Puerto Rican Literature: Reading Piri Thomas, Migdalia Cruz and Guillermo Rebollo Gil - Guillermo B Irizarry Diaz, University of Connecticut

• Jibarista Lament, Agency and Uplift: The Tacit Dangers of Esmeralda Santiago - Maritza G Stanchich, University of Puerto Rico/Rio Piedras

• Precarious Post-9/11 Identities: The Puerto Rican Diaspora in a Play by Quiara Alegría Hudes - Marisel C Moreno, University of Notre Dame