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1 results

  • Chapter 18 - The Work of War

  • from Part V - Labor
  • Edited by John Alba Cutler, University of California, Berkeley, Marissa López, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Book:
    Latinx Literature in Transition, 1848–1992
    Published online:
    10 April 2025
    Print publication:
    17 April 2025, pp 315-332

  • Summary

    Debates about Latinx literary representations of war tend to emphasize either how Latinx literature offers a means of repair for war’s ravages or, alternatively, that violence is constitutive of latinidad itself. This chapter charts a middle course through both positions by arguing that US Latinx literature highlights both irresolute, unreconciled wars and, what Jesse Alemán describes as Latinx “micro-wars” within major conflicts; such micro-wars, furthermore, often involve clashes and negotiations around the racialized boundaries of Latinx communities. Here we survey a range of Latinx representations of the Civil War, World War II, the Korean War, and wars of revolution and counterinsurgency in Viet Nam and Central America. Rather than waging war on an irredeemable enemy, we conclude, Latinxs lay siege to the imperial relationship championed by the US in most of these conflicts.