Is there such a thing as a Literature of the Americas? Are there works of fiction that transcend the scope of conventional nation-based frameworks of meaning—such as American literature, Cuban literature, Mexican literature, and so on? If so, how are the fictional worlds of such transnational—or specifically, hemispheric American—literary works constructed, and what social and economic developments underpin them? This course examines exemplary modern and contemporary hemispheric American literary works, works that, for varying reasons, just don’t fit any single nation-based category, texts that embed an inter-American dimension, crossing national boundaries between Latin America and the U.S. Different kinds of transnational travel produce different kinds of migrant genres: immigrant literature (voluntary displacement), exile literature (forced displacement), and diaspora literature. Socio-cultural foundations of hemispheric American works include: 20th- and 21st-century mass migration from Latin America to the U.S., legal and undocumented (Goldman, Alvarez); violent displacement through exile and state terror (Alvarez, Arenas); the local impact of expatriate writers, such as Hemingway in Cuba (Padura); finally, the shared history of European exploration, conquest and colonization of the Americas, South and North (William Carlos Williams).

Required texts:
Leonardo Padura, Adiós, Hemingway (2006; Canongate)
Francisco Goldman, The Ordinary Seaman (1997; Grove)
Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls (1992; Penguin)
Julia Alvarez, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991; Penguin)
William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain (1925; New Directions)
a small online course reader with short fiction and criticism