Chapter 42 - Latino Poetry and Poetics

Summary

The term Latino guides the conversation toward more specific avenues of inquiry. The same process applies to an examination of Latino poetry and poetics. In the meantime, what's worth examining is how the three main U.S. Latino populations have shaped their respective literatures in order to come to terms with their identity, language, and history. Although their immigrant trajectories and political leanings are distinct, the Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American poetry communities have followed parallel journeys from marginalized voices to visible presences in twentieth-century American letters. In the Chicano community there is no dividing line between a poet and an activist. The relationship between the United States and its unincorporated territory, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, bears a long and conflicted history. Politically, the Chicano community has always expressed admiration for the Cuban Revolution of 1959 but maintains a conflicted opinion about its leader, Fidel Castro.