From the mean streets of the barrio to the house on Mango Street, from the Mambo Kings to the Garcia Girls, the authors who contribute to this shocking, funny collection of fiction and nonfiction transport us across the geographies and through the cultures in an attempt to articulate the joys, struggles, defeats, and triumphs of growing up Latino in the U.S.

Ilan Stavans is one of the foremost Latino scholars and here his best essays are collected into one volume. These beautifully written pieces explore the breadth of contemporary Latino-American culture, depicting and analyzing what he calls "life in the hyphen". Illustrations.

Jews and Latinos have been unlikely partners through tumultuous times. This eclectic book of readings presents the ups and downs of that partnership. It includes some 70 canonical authors, Jews and non-Jews alike, through whose diverse oeuvre - poetry, fiction, theatre, personal and philosophical essays, correspondence, historical documents and even kitchen recipes - the reader is able to navigate the shifting waters of history, from Spain in the 10th century to the Spanish-speaking Americas and the United States at the beginning of the 21st century.

Jews and Latinos have been unlikely partners through tumultuous times. This eclectic book of readings presents the ups and downs of that partnership. It includes some 70 canonical authors, Jews and non-Jews alike, through whose diverse oeuvre - poetry, fiction, theatre, personal and philosophical essays, correspondence, historical documents and even kitchen recipes - the reader is able to navigate the shifting waters of history, from Spain in the 10th century to the Spanish-speaking Americas and the United States at the beginning of the 21st century.

An entertaining, provocative and often exhilarating collection, this anthology celebrates some of the most original and cutting-edge work to emerge from the cultural collide that is Latino life in the United States.

Not only do "modern" Jewish languages like Yiddish and Hebrew have their own Jewish writers, but every major Western tongue from German and Russian to English and Portuguese does as well. These writers are often at the crossroad between the two traditions: their Jewish one and their own national one. Is there such a thing as a modern Jewish literary tradition, one navigating across linguistic and national lines? If so, how should one define it?Ilan Stavans is uniquely qualified to answer these questions and to comment on the power and challenges of cultural margins and literary crossings. He...

Hailed as a literary relative of Kafka and Poe by his Italian and Cuban contemporaries, Calvert Casey and his enthralling work have until now remained eclipsed in the United States. This collection brings all of Casey s powerful short stories and a fragment of an unfinished novel to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Exploring the human condition through poetically unique yet torturous views of the mind, Casey was a renegade artist whose work perceives reality as a smoke screen behind which Truth is hidden. He intended his fiction to disturb and subvert standard, plot-driven...

It is commonly assumed that the United States and Latin America, culturally so different, move artistically to very different rhythms. Also common is the assumption that, with rare exception, the literary figures on one side of the global North/South divide have had little interest in the work of their counterparts. With Mutual Impressions Ilan Stavans dispels these notions by showing how solid the bridges between writers and across borders have been, at least since the early days of this century, and how crucial they are likely to become as we enter the next millennium.
Divided...

It is commonly assumed that the United States and Latin America, culturally so different, move artistically to very different rhythms. Also common is the assumption that, with rare exception, the literary figures on one side of the global North/South divide have had little interest in the work of their counterparts. With Mutual Impressions Ilan Stavans dispels these notions by showing how solid the bridges between writers and across borders have been, at least since the early days of this century, and how crucial they are likely to become as we enter the next millennium.
Divided...