Central American Literatures as World Literature

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Challenging the notion that Central American literature is a marginal space within Latin American literary and world literary production, this collection positions and discusses Central American literature within the recently revived debates on world literature. This groundbreaking volume draws on new scholarship on global, transnational, postcolonial, translational, and sociological perspectives on the regions literature, expanding and challenging these debates by focusing on the heterogenous literatures of Central America and its diasporas. Contributors discuss poems, testimonios, novels, and short stories in relation to center-periphery, cosmopolitan, and Internationalist paradigms. Central American Literatures as World Literature explores the multiple ways in which Central American literature goes beyond or against the confines of the nation-state, especially through the indigenous, Black, and migrant voices.

Reviews

Central American Literatures as World Literature marks an important milestone in the opening up of Central American studies to a broader paradigm. Its contributors discuss some of Central Americas most renowned authors as well as lesser known but increasingly important Black, Indigenous, queer, and immigrant writers. This book draws us away from the narrow nationalist frameworks that have dominated our understanding of Central American society and moves us toward the pluricultural realities and diverse Indigenous cosmologies of the region. I applaud the editor and the contributors for producing a volume that showcases the richness of Central American literature and its diaspora. * Nanci Buiza, Associate Professor of Spanish, Swarthmore College, USA *
This book is a passionate reflection of Central American literature's participation in the construction of world ideas, anchored in the isthmus diverse cultural constellations and in the routes of travel, exile and migration. It shows brilliantly how precarious cultural fields can intervene in the redefining of world literature. * Mnica Albizrez, Lecturer of Spanish and Latin American Literature, Universitt Hamburg, Germany *

Author Bio

Sophie Esch is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Rice University, USA, with specialization in Central American, Mexican, and comparative literature. She is author of an award-winning book, Modernity at Gunpoint (2018), and has edited a special dossier on Central American literature for one of the premier journals of her field: Passages: Routes of Migration and Memory in Central American Literature, Revista de Estudios Hispnicos, vol. 54 no. 1.