1st Edition
The Routledge Handbook of Latinx Life Writing
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.
Introduction
Maria Joaquina Villaseñor
PART 1: Historical Approaches and Memory in Latinx Life Writing
1 “A Race Equal To, If Not Better Than, Theirs”: 19th‑CenturyCalifornio Testimonios
Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz
2 With a Pencil in Their Hand: The Corrido as Life Writing
Ric Alviso
3 “I Will Never Deny What I am”: Masculinity in Oral Life Stories with Latine Vietnam Veterans
Tomás F. Summers Sandoval Jr.
4 Fictional and Nonfictional Memory: Exploring the Liminal Spaces of History and Memory in Latinx Life Writing
Daniel Luis Archer
5 Genealogies in 21st‑Century Latina Life Writing: Memory, History, and Storytelling
Jennifer Geraci
PART II: Migration, Exile and Borders in Latinx Life Writing
6 Cartographies of Hispanic and Latinx Travel Writing: Discourses of Origins, Nations, and Exploration
Christine J. Fernández
7 Women’s Auto/biography in the Mexico‑United States Borderscape, 1942–968: Elisa M. del Valle, Celia Trevino Carranza, and Consuelo Pena de Villarreal Elizondo
Paulo Alvarado
8 Latina/o/x Autobiographical Narratives of Exile: Examples from Cuba and Chile
Lucía M. Suárez
9 Latinx Life Writers of South American Origin or Heritage
Cynthia Martínez
10 Coming Out as Undocumented Through Personal Narrative, 2006–2016
Leah Butterfield
PART III: Chicana/Latina Feminisms and Life Writing
11 How Latina Theater Found a Voice
Leigh Johnson
12 Chicana Feminist Life Writing: Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua, and Necessary Transgressions of Genre
R. Joyce Z. L. Garay
13 Undisciplining Academia through Feminista Testimonio Writing
Rebeca Burciaga, Dolores Delgado Bernal, C. Alejandra Elenes, and Judith Flores Carmona
14 Chicanx and Latinx Feminist Testimonios
Ana Roncero‑Bellido
15 ¿Y Yo Tambien?: Sexual Assault Narratives in Chicana Memoirs
Melissa Castillo Planas
PART IV: Inscribing Race, Gender and Sexuality in Latinx Life Writing
16 Writing from the Wound: Contemporary Latinx Writing as Racial Identity in Process
Dominique Aurilla Vargas
17 The Afro‑Latino Memoir
Trent Masiki
18 Mapping Motherhood, Parenting, and Queer Care as Rebirth in Chicana/Latina Life Writing
Marivel T. Danielson
19 LGBTQ+ Latinx Poetry as Life Writing
Edward A. Chamberlain
20 Disidentifications: New York City as Space for (Dis)Encounters in Latinx Queer Literature
José Acosta‑Seda
21 From Grindr Advice Column to Memoir: Latinx Life Writing Online and the Queer Latinx Care Work of John Paul Brammer’s “!Hola Papi!” Series
Jennifer M. Lozano and Katie R. Peel
PART V: Latinx Life Writing: Signature Themes and Genres
22 Vulnerability: Finding a Latinx Approach to Life Writing
Ruth Behar
23 Automitografia: Empowerment and Cultural Resistance in Chicanx Life Writing
Juan Velasco
24 Transformative Testimony and Lamentation: Latinx Protest Poetry as a New World of Witnessing
Francisco E. Robles
25 Latinx Coming‑of‑Age Memoirs, 1961–2022
Regina Marie Mills
26 Latinx Life Writing in Comics and Graphic Novels
Samantha Ceballos
Biography
Maria Joaquina Villaseñor (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Associate Dean of Liberal Arts at Sierra College. Previously she was a Professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies in the Department of Humanities and Communication and co-founder of the Ethnic Studies Working Group at California State University, Monterey Bay. Villaseñor is the co-editor of Latinx Experiences: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2023), a co-author of The Historical Dictionary of U.S. Latino Literature (2017); a Latina life writer herself, her personal essays have been published in journals including The Acentos Review. Dr. Villaseñor’s family is from Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, Mexico. She is a twin, a mother of twins, and a lifelong Californian.
Christine J. Fernández is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her scholarship focuses on Hemispheric connections between Latin America and the United States and its intersections with gender studies and life writing. Her work has been published in journals such as eHumanista, Studies on Latin American Popular Culture, and Hispania.
