Buenas Noches, American Culture Latina/o Aesthetics of Night [Paperback]

Often treated like night itselfboth visible and invisible, feared and romanticizedLatina/os make up the largest minority group in the US. In her newest work, Mar?a DeGuzm?n explores representations of night in art and literature from the Caribbean, Colombia, Central and South America, and the US, calling into question nights effect on the formation of identity for Latina/os in and outside of the US. She takes as her subject novels, short stories, poetry, essays, non-fiction, photo-fictions, photography, and film, and examines these texts through the lenses of nationhood, sexuality, human rights, exoticism, among others.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Critically Inhabiting the Night
1. Dreaded Non-Identitites of Night: Night and Shadow in Chicana/o Cultural Production
2. Queer Tropics of Night and the Caribe of American (Post) Modernism
3. Postcolonial Pre-Coloumbian Cosmologies of Night in Contemporary U.S.-Based Central American Texts
4. Transcultural Night Work of U.S.-Based South American Cultural Producers
Conclusion: Two Homelands Have I: America and the Night
Notes
Bibliography
Index

[T]he multidisciplinary approach of this work allows DeGuzm?n to reflect on the complexity and multiplicity of Latinidades in both content and method, successfully situating the volume in the broad, and often deliberately complex and nuanced, fields of Latina/o Studies, American Studies, and Cultural Studies (to mention a few). Jan 2016DeGuzm?n . . . offers new insights into how representations of night have been employed to form (impose) a Latino identity within and beyond the borders of the US. Juxtaposing historical illustrations with modern literary and artistic depictions of night from Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the US, she compellingly argues that there are new trends in representations of night used by Latino/a writers and artists as a means of self-representation.In this study, DeGuzm?n has been alã%