As plague, progressive public protest and rightwing revolt has hit the streets and the capitol of this nation, this course is a collaborative inquiry into the question – where is the Latinx voice in national debate?   Citizen and undocumented,  indigenous and afro-descendiente,  mestizo y blanca . . . how do we contemporarily understand and experience race & racism, class & caste distinction, and ‘American’ nationality, itself,  in relation to the historical and cultural context of Spanish/Anglo colonization.

Through engagement with selected critical and literary texts by Latinx, Native and feminists of color writers, the course intends to make visible this invisible population changing the face and mind of the United States of North America.

The course will run in tandem with “In Good Company – The Latinx Public Voice,” a writer series sponsored by Las Maestras Center for Xicana[x] Indigenous Thought, Art and Social Practice.  Each of the four featured writers has published a critical narrative volume in 2020, which will also be required texts for the course.

The bi-weekly schedule is as follows:

• April 8:  Luis J. Rodríguez (From Our Land to Our Land — Essays, Journeys, and Imaginings from a Native Xicanx Writer)
• April 22:  Roberto Lovato (Unforgetting — A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas)
• May 6:  María Hinojosa (Once I Was You — A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America)
• May 20:  Cristina Rivera Garza (Grieving — Dispatches from a Wounded Country)