The Other Latin@: Writing against a Singular Identity

Abstract

The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity Edited by Blas Falconer and Lorraine M. Lopez Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-8165-2867-7 184 pages; $22.00 [paper] Reviewer: Ignacio Rodeno, The University of AlabamaThis anthology, edited by Blas Falconer and Lorraine M. Lopez, consists of a collection of twenty essays that center on the question of identity. The aim of the volume is to showcase the lack of an essential Latino identity and the presence of a plurality of experiences that undermines the idea that Latinos are a monolithic group. It is only fitting, then, that these pieces are written in the first person narrative. The volume opens with a foreword by William Luis, and ends with an afterword by the same critic, where he discusses the labels Latino and Hispanic in relation to culture and identity, as well as the use of one or another through history. Such labels are problematic, as Luis notes, since they try to fix a concept that is, in itself, multifaceted, fluid, subject to alteration by means of its diasporic nature.By employing the first person narrative, The Other Latin@ contributes to the body of work that strives for the creation of a collective memory through the personal. The autobiographical voice, where the self reflects on a significant moment or event in his or her life, has been widely used in the so-called ethnic literatures to present such experience as something that can be read as representative of the community precisely because of its significance and relation to it. In doing so, the particular experience becomes the voice of the community, a voice that has not been regularly acknowledged by the mainstream culture in the case of Latinos. It is through reading narratives of the self as collective memory that non-hegemonic communities seek to achieve a better understanding of their origins, their history-in sum their identity. One might argue that narratives in which the particular experience is recognized as communal would result in cementing identity as fixed, homogeneous, monolithic, and this is even more the case with an anthology, which inclines us to read them as a unit. However, because of this anthology's pursuit of the opposite, it is particularly valuableIn order to start dismantling the monolithic, stereotypical image of Latinos, the anthology starts with Lisa Chavez's account of the experience of a Latina growing up in an unexpected location: Alaska. In the same vein, Joy Castro and Teresa Dovalpage illustrate experiences of Cubans who immigrated to the U.S. at different times than the ones that dominate Cuban-American narratives. Other authors reflect the linguistic limitation of Latinos who have lost their Spanish and are leftto wrestle with the notion that being Latino means having a link to the Spanish language. Precisely by describing this experience of exclusion, U.S. Puerto Rican Judith Ortiz Cofer redefines Latino to include alternative identities. Taking issue with the notion that Latinos are fundamentally immigrants, Carla Trujillo and Lorraine Lopez remind us that some Chicanos did not cross the border, but rather the border "crossed" them. Trujillo further illustrates the frictions between groups of Chicanos, stressing the erroneous idea that they share a homogeneous identity, contrary to common belief. Blas Falconer, Erasmo Guerra, and Steven Cordova link their Latino identity to sexual orientation, questioning the idea of machismo as an essential aspect of Latino masculinity. …