Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants have had a significant presence in North America since the nineteenth century. Recently, Brazilians have also established vibrant communities in the U.S. This anthology brings together, for the first time in English, the writings of these diverse Portuguese-speaking, or "Luso-American" voices. Historically linked by language, colonial experience, and cultural influence, yet ethnically distinct, Luso-Americans have often been labeled an "invisible minority." This collection seeks to address this lacuna, with a broad mosaic of prose, poetry, essays, memoir, and other writings by more than fifty prominent literary figures--immigrants and their descendants, as well as exiles and sojourners. It is an unprecedented gathering of published, unpublished, forgotten, and translated writings by a transnational community that both defies the stereotypes of ethnic literature, and embodies the drama of the immigrant experience.

The stories in this prize-winning collection evoke a complete world, one so richly imagined and finely realized that the stories themselves are not so much read as experienced. The world of these stories is Portuguese-American, redolent of incense and spices, resonant with ritual and prayer, immersed in the California culture of freeway and commerce. Packed with lyrical prose and vivid detail, acclaimed writer Katherine Vaz conjures a captivating blend of Old World heritage and New World culture to explore the links between families, friends, strangers, and their world. ø From the threat of a serial killer as the background for a young girl?s first brush with death to the fallout of a modern-day visitation from the Virgin Mary; from an AIDS-stricken squatter refusing to vacate an empty Lisbon home to a mother?s yearlong struggle with the death of her synesthetic daughter, these deft stories make their world ours.

Literature written in English by American writers of Portuguese descent has come of age with the acclaimed work of Frank Gaspar and Katherine Vaz. This study attempts to explore America's understanding of its ethnic minorities, and the writers' own ethnic pride and celebration of their roots. It includes a full length analysis of works by Thomas Braga, Julian Silva, Alfred Lewis, Charles Felix and other voices. Born in Portugal in 1961, Reinaldo Francisco Silva emigrated to America in 1967 at age 6, settling in Newark, New Jersey. He has lectured at Rutgers University, New York University, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Seton Hall University, and is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Aveiro in Portugal. His book, Representations of the Portuguese in American Literature was published by the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth in 2008. This title is available as a PDF ebook from Humanities-Ebooks.co.uk and for libraries from Ebrary, EBSCO and Ingram.

Portuguese Literature and the Environment explores the relationship between Portuguese literature and the environment from Medieval times to the present. From the centrality of nature in Medieval poetry, through the bucolic verse of the Renaissance, all the way to the Romantic and post-Romantic nostalgia for a pristine natural or rural landscape under threat in the wake of industrialization, Portuguese literature has frequently reflected on the connection between humans and the natural world. More recently, the postcolonial turn in contemporary literature has highlighted the contrast between the environment of the former colonies and that of Portugal. Contributors to the collection examine how Portuguese writers engage with the environment and have incorporated nature in their texts not only to prompt social, political or philosophical reflections on human society, but also as a way to learn from non-humans. The book is organized into three sections. The first explores the relationship between Portuguese philosophy, historiography, culture, and environmental issues. The second section discusses the link between literary texts and the environment from the Renaissance to 1900. The final section analyzes the connection between literary movements or specific authors and environmental change from 1900 to today. Scholars of literature, Latin American studies, literature, and environmental studies will find this volume especially useful.

• Winner of the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize This collection is filled with narrative and character grounded in the meaning and value the earth gives to human existence. In one story, a woman sleeps with the village priest, trying to gain back the land the church took from her family; in another, relatives in the Azores fight over a plot of land owned by their expatriate American cousin. Even apparently small images are cast in terms of the earth: Milton, one narrator explains, has made apples the object of a misunderstanding by naming them as Eden's fruit: "In the Bible, no fruit is named in the Garden of Eden - and to this day apples are misunderstood. They were trying to tempt people not into sin but into listening to the earth more closely. . . . their white meal runs wet with the knowledge of the language of the land, but people do not listen."Vaz's beautiful, intensely conscious language often delicately slips her stories into the realm of the fado, the Portuguese song about fate and longing. "Listen for the nightingale that presses its breast against the thorns of the rose," on character sings, "that the song might be more beautiful." Such a verse might describe Vaz's own motive behind her willingness to confront her subject's ambiguities and her characters' conflicts - the simultaneous joy and sorrow of some of life's discoveries, the pain sometimes hidden within passion and pleasure.

Offers insight into the histories, cultures, and social dynamics of Portuguese and other Lusophone and Luso-African of the northeastern seaboard of the U.S.

This is the first Chronology of Portuguese Literature to be published in any language. It presents a comprehensive year-by-year list of significant and representative works of literature published mainly in Portuguese from 1128 to the beginning of the current millennium. As a reference tool, it displays the continuity and variety of the literature of the oldest European country, and documents the development of Portuguese letters from their origins to the year 2000, while also presenting the year of birth and death of each author. This book is an ideal resource for students and academics of Portuguese literature and Lusophone cultures.