Latino USA: A Cartoon History - Hardcover

Stavans, Ilan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465082211 ISBN 13: 9780465082216

Publisher: Basic Books, 2000

Synopsis

Latino USA represents the culmination of Ilan Stavans's lifelong determination to meet the challenges of capturing the joys, nuances, and multiple dimensions of Latino culture within the context of the English language. In this cartoon history of Latinos, Stavans seeks to combine the solemnity of so-called "serious literature" and history with the inherently theatrical and humorous nature of the comics. The range of topics includes Columbus, Manifest Destiny, the Alamo, William Carlos Williams, Desi Arnaz, West Side Story, Castro, Guevera, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Neruda, García Márquez, the Mariel Boatlift, and Selena. Stavans represents Hispanic civilization as a fiesta of types, archetypes, and stereotypes. These "cliché figurines" include a toucan (displayed regularly in books by García Márquez, Allende, and others), the beloved Latino comedian Cantinflas (known as "the Hispanic Charlie Chaplin"), a masked wrestler, and Captain America. These multiple, at times contradictory voices, each narrating various episodes of Latino history from a unique perspective, combine to create a carnivalesque rhythm, democratic and impartial. For, as Stavans states, "History, of course, is a kaleidoscope where nothing is absolute." Latino USA, like the history it so entertainingly relates, is a dazzling kaleidoscope of irreverence, wit, subversion, anarchy, politics, humanism, celebration, and serious and responsible history.

About this title

Review:

If it's a comic book, then it can't be a work of serious scholarship, right? Wrong. Ilan Stavans, a literary scholar and cultural historian, teams up with Chicano artist Lalo Alcaraz to craft an endlessly entertaining but painstakingly researched history of Latinos--also called Latin Americans and Hispanics, and taking in peoples from all over the Spanish-speaking world--in the United States. Stavans's text covers the ground from avocados to zoot suits, touching on such matters as the Puerto Rican independence movement, the Mexican American War, the Marielito flotilla, and the ongoing struggle for civil rights throughout the hemisphere.

Stavans has great fun, it's clear, twitting received wisdom. He observes, for instance, that Mexico's "Niños Heroes" may be an invention of folklore, and wryly remarks that "nationalism turns egotism into an ideology." Alcaraz has just as much fun, subversively borrowing stock figures such as the toucan (a symbol in much Latin American literature) and the skeleton to serve as a kind of ironic Greek chorus. But author and illustrator also fulfill an earnestly undertaken mission: namely, in Stavans's words, to "represent Hispanic civilization as a fiesta of types, archetypes, and stereotypes" and to tell its story from many points of view. In this they succeed admirably, and Latino U.S.A. is required reading for anyone interested in democratic, inclusive historical writing. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

Ilan Stavans teaches at Amherst College. His books include The Hispanic Condition, The One-handed Pianist and Other Stories, and The Riddle of Cantinflas. He has been a National Books Critics Circle Award nominee and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Latino Literature Prize, amongst many honors.Lalo Alcaraz is a LA-based, internationally renowned editorial cartoonist. He has contributed to the New York Times, the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, and Variety.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0465082211
• ISBN 13: 9780465082216
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192
• Illustrator: Alcaraz Lalo