Today marks the beginning of the fall semester as well as the first day of a class that I’m very excited about: U.S. Latino/a literature. My undergraduate minor was Spanish, and one of the very best summers of my life was the one when I studied abroad in Spain. I hope this class will inspire me to brush up on my Spanish, and I also believe it will introduce me to issues of culture (clash?) within immigrant populations.
Here is the reading list for the class:
- Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives; ISBN: 978081662286
- Boricua Literature; ISBN: 9780814731475
- Woman Hollering Creek; ISBN: 9780679738565
- Cuban Palimpsests; ISBN: 9780816642144
- Down These Mean Streets-30th Anniv.Ed.; ISBN: 9780679781424
- Days of Awe; ISBN: 9780345441546
- Dreaming in Cuban; ISBN: 9780345381439
Just for fun, I used www.whatshouldireadnext.com to come up with some other literature that might be interesting to me in this area. What an interesting tool! And the results are interesting, too, even though the site couldn’t find most of the books I entered. Nevertheless, worth a look, and here are my results based on entering some of the books above:
- Octavio Paz – The Labyrinth of Solitude: The Other Mexico, Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude, Mexico and the United States, the Philanthropic Ogre
- Linda Hogan – Solar Storms
- Terry Burnham, Jay Phelan – Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food – Taming Our Primal Instincts
- Louise Erdrich – Four Souls
- Anne-Marie MacDonald – Vermimm Mein Flehen / Fall on Your Knees
- Julia Alvarez – Yo!
- Barbara Kingsolver – Pigs in Heaven
- Toni Morrison – Song of Solomon: A Novel
- Carson McCullers – The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Penguin Modern Classics)
Erin Clark Frost 
Hi again! Sorry to write again so soon, but what is “Women Bothering Creek”? I’m interested in Appalachian studies… is it related to that field?
(Women Hollering Creek) –correction!
Woman Hollering Creek … although I haven’t read it yet … is a collection of short stories, and it seems that most of them are set on the Texas/Mexico border. I’m guessing any connection to Appalachian studies is fleeting, but I’ll let you know when I get into the book!