El Regreso a Coatlicue
EL REGRESO A COATLICUE
Rethinking Chicana/o Literature through Food
As Food Studies has grown into a well-established field, literary scholars have not fully addressed the prevalent themes of food, eating, and consumption in Chicana/o literature. Here, contributors propose food consciousness as a paradigm to examine the literary discourses of Chicana/o authors as they shift from the nation to the postnation.
Mitos y leyendas de México
Colonial Itineraries of Contemporary Mexico
The rewritings of the Mexican colonia discussed in this book question a present reality of marginalities and inequality, of imposed political domination, and of hybrid subjectivities. In their examination of the novels, films, poetry, and chronicles produced in and outside of Mexico since 2000, the critics included in Colonial Itineraries of Contemporary Mexico produce new interpretations, alternative readings, and different angles of analysis that extend far beyond the theories of the new historical novel of the eighties and nineties, and well beyond the limits of the novel as re-creative genre. Through a transformative interdisciplinary lens, this book studies the ultra-contemporary chronicles of Carlos Monsiváis, the poetry of Carmen Boullosa and Luis Felipe Fabre, and the novels of Enrique Serna, Héctor de Mauleón, Mónica Lavín, and Pablo Soler Frost, among others. The book also pays close attention to a good sample of recent children’s literature that revisit Mexico’s colonia. It includes the transatlantic perspective of Spanish novelist Inma Chacón, and a detailed analysis of the strategies employed by Laura Esquivel in the creation of a best seller. Other chapters are devoted to the study of transnational film productions, a play by Flavio González Mello, and a set of novels set in the nineteenth-century colonia that problematize static notions of both personal and national identity within specific cultural palimpsests. Taken together, these incisive readings open broader conversations about Mexican coloniality as it continues well into the twenty-first century.
The Willow and the Spiral
Octavio Paz (México, 1914–1998) was one of the foremost poets and essayists of the twentieth century. Read in translations into many of the world’s languages, Paz received numerous awards and prizes during his lifetime, participated in major artistic and political movements of the twentieth century, served as Mexico’s ambassador in India (1962–1968), and was the editor of Plural and Vuelta, two literary journals of prominent influence in Mexico, Latin America, and Spain. In 1990 Paz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. This book of essays is a commemoration of Octavio Paz on the first centenary of his birth, a celebration undertaken with Paz’s distinguishing legacy: criticism, internationally inclusive, and open to differing viewpoints. The Willow and the Spiral: Essays on Octavio Paz and the Poetic Imagination contains studies in English and in Spanish by top-ranking Paz scholars from various continents and wide-ranging literary traditions, as well as by an emerging generation of critics who approach the work of Octavio Paz from diverse and recent theoretical methods. Specially written for this volume, the fourteen essays are in-depth studies of Paz’s poetry and essays in relation to art, eroticism, literary history, politics, the art of translation, and to Paz’s life-long reflections on world cultures and civilizations as represented by China, France, India, Japan, the United States and, among others, Mesoamerica. The essays range from new critical analyses of Piedra de sol (Sunstone) and Blanco, to studies of Renga, the haiku tradition and, among other topics, Marcel Duchamp and the literary Avant-Garde. This book will be of importance to Paz scholars, teachers, students, and the general reader interested in Octavio Paz and in topics related to artistic, literary, and cultural movements that shaped the twentieth century and that continue to inspire and steer artists and writers in the twenty-first century.
