(Taught at UNC Chapel Hill, Fall 2018)
An interdisciplinary discussion-based course, this class will expose students to a variety of texts that depict the process of growing up as Latina/o/x in the United States. While the primary reading list is made up of novels, secondary texts include essays, theoretical articles, podcasts, and videos. The course begins with an introduction to what it means to be Latina/o/x in the United States, followed by units on criminalization, education and bilingualism, gender and sexuality, and migration. Each of the works within these units will be analyzed based on the context in which it is written, as well as on class discussions surrounding the way specific issues affect the Latinx community as a whole.
Primary texts:
Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory.
Luis J. Rodríguez’s Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A
Daisy Hernández’s A Cup of Water Under My Bed
Rigoberto González’s Butterfly Boy
Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends
Cristina Henríquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans
