Este es el tercer volumen de un proyecto cuyo objetivo es la traducción y lectura crítica de los cuarenta cuadernillos de Emily Dickinson, secuencias poéticas cortas que plantean una serie de preguntas acerca de las intenciones y los logros artísticos de la misteriosa autora norteamericana. La traducción de cada cuadernillo va acompañada de un comentario crítico con el fin de explicar los poemas y establecer el papel temático que juega cada una de estas piezas tempranas dentro de la obra global de la poeta. Los tres cuadernillos que componen esta tercera entrega incluyen un total de cincuenta y ocho poemas escritos entre 1859 y 1860. En ellos vemos cómo Dickinson empieza a desarrollar de manera consciente sus temas y, al mismo tiempo, da los primeros pasos hacia el uso de la secuencia poética como una unidad coherente de expresión.

Nephtalí De León is a USA born and raised Chicano former migrant worker that became a Poet/Painter/Author/and Playwright. He has been published in several countries with his poetry translated into twelve languages. Growing up in the cauldron of borderland conflicts between USA and Mexico, by the edge of the river that divides both countries, the Rio Grande, he is no stranger to the myths, legends, and stories that form the world view of his multicultural native people. Present day native American migrants have been labeled and treated as strangers in their ancient homelands. Those who appropriated their lands now call them illegals, undocumented invaders. They administer their presence with such legal definitions in the courts of their own invention. It is in this arena that the author presents a timeless legend of a tortured and maligned spirit that refuses to die. The legend of La Llorona begins 500 years ago when invaders first came to the American continent. Reality went beyond surreal, and the Victim became the Culprit, was punished and condemned to wander unto eternity in hopeless pain for her crime, the worst any one can be accused of – the drowning of her own children! This centuries old legend is very much alive. Everybody knows her name – La Llorona.

Acclaimed by many as one of the most gifted essayists and stylists in American letters these last few decades, Richard Rodriguez has left an indelible imprint on the tradition of autobiographical writing of the nation. Rodeño’s study of the four installments of Rodriguez’s self-writing offers an insightful and perspicacious analysis of the evolution and the most controversial elements in this Chicano writer’s production so far. Delving deeply into issues of racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, religious background, various types of hybridity, and different forms of socio-cultural adaptation, this book presents all kinds of incisive observations about the contested space(s) that “minority” self-writers are often pushed to occupy in the American tradition of the genre.

In the past four decades Native American/First Nations Literature has emerged as a literary and academic field and it is now read, taught, and theorized in many educational settings outside the United States and Canada. Native American and First Nations authors have also broadened their themes and readership by exploring transnational contexts and foreign realities, and through translation into major and minor languages, thus establishing creative networks with other literary communities around the world. However, when their texts are taught abroad, the perpetuation of Indian stereotypes, mystifications, and misconceptions is still a major issue that non-Native readers, students, and teachers continue to struggle with. To counter such distorted representations and neo/colonialist readings, this book presents a strategic selection of critical case studies that set specific texts within cross-cultural contexts wherein Native-based methodologies and key concepts are placed at the center of the reading practice. The challenging role of teachers and researchers as potential intermediaries and responsible disseminators of what Gayatri C. Spivak calls “transnational literacy” as well as the reception of Native North American works, contexts, and themes by international readers thus becomes a primary focus of attention. This volume provides a set of critical analyses and practical resources that may enable teachers outside the United States and Canada to incorporate Native American/First Nations literature and related cultural and historical texts into their teaching practices and current research interests in a creative, decolonizing, and responsible manner.

This book proposes a renewed myth-critical approach to the so-called ‘wasteland modernism’ of the 1920s to reassess certain key texts of the American modernist canon from a critical prism that offers new perspectives of analysis and interpretation. Myth-criticism and, more specifically, the critical survey of myth as an aesthetic and ideological strategy fundamental for the comprehension of modernist literature, leads to an engaging discussion about the disenchantment of myth in modernist literary texts. This process of mythical disenchantment, inextricable from the cultural and historical circumstances that define the modernist zeitgeist, offers a possibility for revising from a contemporary standpoint a set of classic texts that are crucial to our understanding of the modern literary tradition in the United States. This study carries out an exhaustive and updated myth-critical examination of works by T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and Djuna Barnes to broaden the scope of familiar themes and archetypes, enclosing the textual analysis of these works in a wider exploration about the purpose and functioning of myth in literature, particularly in times of crisis and transformation.

Benjamin Drew’s "North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada" (1856) is a collection of his interviews with former slaves living in Canada who had escaped from the United States, and an invaluable example of the transnational abolitionist movement’s political agenda. These edited oral accounts show how these runaways turned into African Canadians and reconfigured new meanings of Blackness in Canada, set out the foundations of a Black Canadian sense of attachment, and eventually helped to reshape North America by contributing to the birth of the Canadian nation-state.

Quaker characters have peopled many an American literary work—most notably, "Uncle Tom’s Cabin"—as Quakerism has been historically associated with progressive attitudes and the advancement of social justice. With the rise in recent years of the Christian romance market, dominated by American Evangelical companies, there has been a renewed interest in fictional Quakers. In the historical Quaker romances analyzed in this book, Quaker heroines often devote time to spiritual considerations, advocate the sanctity of marriage and promote traditional family values. However, their concern with social justice also leads them to engage in subversive behavior and to question the status quo, as illustrated by heroines who are active on the Underground Railroad or are seen organizing the Seneca Falls convention. Though relatively liberal in terms of gender, Quaker romances are considerably less progressive when it comes to race relations. Thus, they reflect America’s conflicted relationship with its history of race and gender abuse, and the country’s tendency to both resist and advocate social change. Ultimately, Quaker romances reinforce the myth of America as a White and Christian nation, here embodied by the Quaker heroine, the all-powerful savior who rescues Native Americans, African Americans and Jews while conquering the hero’s heart.