Acknowledged Legislator: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Mart?n Espada [Paperback]

Acknowledged Legislator: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Mart?n Espada stands as the first-ever collection of essays on poet and activist Mart?n Espada. It is also, to date, the only published book-length, single-author study of Espada currently in existence. Relying on innovative, highly original contributions from thirteen Espada scholars, its principal aim is to argue for a long overdue critical awareness of and cultural appreciation for Espada and his body of writing. Acknowledged Legislator accomplishes this task in three fundamental ways: by providing readers with background information on the poets life and work; offering an examination into the subject matter and dominant themes that are frequently contained in his writing; and finally, by advocating, in a variety of ways, for why we should be reading, discussing, and teaching the Espada canon. Divided into four distinct sections that modulate through several theoretical framesfrom Espadas attention to resistance poetics and concerns for historical memory to his oppositional critique of neoliberalism and support for a class consciousness grounded in labor rightsAcknowledged Legislator offers a cohesive, forward-thinking interpretive statement of the poets vision and proposes a critical (re)assessment for how we read Espada, now and in the future.Edward J. Carvalho is associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Health Sciences at DeVry University (Philadelphia Metro).

Poet Mart?n Espada (b. 1957), who has become synonymous with political activism, is a strong advocate of social equality, often to the detriment of his exposure to a more mainstream audience. This collection offers a comprehensive biographical-critical study of a poet who could be considered the unofficial voice of marginal Latinos. He writes from the perspective of a first generation Nuyorican who experienced overt racial discrimination, and his knowledge of Latin American literature of protest is extensive. In the iló%