Label Me Latina/o Fall 2018 Volume 8
Filed under: fall
Essay
Virgil Suárez: memoria y perspectiva exílica en la literatura cubano-americana
By Raúl Rosales Herrera
Raúl Rosales Herrera earned his doctorate at Columbia University. He is Associate Professor of Spanish at Drew University in Madison, NJ. His research explores the intersection of autobiographical theory, self-representation, and memory discourses, including postmemory in contemporary Latinx fiction and Cuban diasporic narrative. His publications have appeared in the journals Tinta, Hispania, Caribe, and Camino Real, and in the anthologies Language and Identity in Chicano/Latino Discourse, Fotogramas para la multiculturalidad: migraciones y alteridad en el cine español contemporáneo, and Latinos and American Popular Culture. His book Fictional First-Person Discourses in Cuban Diaspora Novels was released in 2012. A National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship recipient, he also chairs the subject area “Latin Americans and Latinos: Identity Issues and Cultural Stereotypes” for the Popular Culture Association.
By Margaret Cantú-Sánchez
Margaret Cantú-Sánchez teaches composition and literature courses with a focus on Latinx theory and literature at St. Mary’s University. Her research focuses on the identity conflict which Anglocentric institutions of learning impose upon Latinx students. As an instructor at a Hispanic Serving Institution, she strives to include multicultural texts in all courses, especially in the core curriculum. Her publications explore how to approach the teaching of Latinx literature and theory; currently, she is working on a book project focusing on the use of Gloria Anzaldúa’s philosophies as interdisciplinary pedagogy.
Creative Non-fiction
By Joanna E. Sanchez-Avila
Joanna E. Sanchez-Avila is a Hondureña-Americanah who was raised in her parents’ occupation, an ice cream truck. This was her first educational site which exposed her to the streets and peoples of Koreatown and South Central Los Angeles, California. Her upbringing influences adamant beliefs in the potential of everyday stories that can be crafted through many creative outlets such as reflective writing, visual texts, multi-modal/sensorial texts, and fa(t)shion’s ‘style as resistance’ ethos. She is a doctoral student in Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English (RCTE) at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her research interests include utilizing ghosts and hauntings as theoretical lenses to examine how Hondurans and Honduran-Americans create, produce, and enact their identities transnationally through various forms and practices of remembering.
Theater
By Diana Burbano
Diana Burbano is a Colombian immigrant, playwright and teaching artist at South Coast Repertory and Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble. Her work has been seen at OSF, The Drama League, San Diego Repertory and Center Theatre Group. Plays: Fabulous Monsters, Policarpa, Caliban’s Island, Linda, etc. She was recently Playwright-in-Residence for Marfa Live Arts in Marfa, TX.
By Marco Antonio Rodriguez
Marco Antonio Rodriguez holds an MFA from Southern Methodist University. His acclaimed play, Ashes Of Light, has received productions in theaters across the nation and internationally. It is the recipient of 5 HOLA and 4 ACE awards, including Outstanding Achievement In Playwriting. Ashes has been published in a bilingual, Spanish/English edition by NoPassport Press (available on Amazon) and studied at various universities. He is the recipient of a Banff International Literary Centre Residency in Canada and a CUNY Dominican Studies Fellowship. His play, Barceló On The Rocks, was an O’Neill Theater Conference semi-finalist and won the MetLife Nuestras Voces Playwriting competition. NoPassport Press published Barceló On The Rocks in a dual English/Spanish edition. Marco was commissioned to adapt Julia Alvarez’ best-selling novel, In The Name Of Salomé, into a stage play. It is currently enjoying a critically acclaimed, extended run at NY’s Spanish Repertory Theater. www.marcoantoniorodriguez.com
By Jaime Rivera
Jaime Antonio Rivera Flores was born in Mexico in 1977. He grew up in Xalapa, Veracruz, and moved to the United States at age 24. He has been writing poetry, short fiction, and theatre since age 12. His interest in language and literature began ever since childhood, when he would read short stories, whole books, and sometimes even the encyclopedia just out of curiosity and thirst for knowledge. He got a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from Universidad de Xalapa in 1999, a Masters in Recreation Administration from Georgia Southern University in 2003, a Masters in Spanish Literature and Linguistics from The Florida State University in 2005, and a PhD in Spanish linguistics from that same institution in 2011. He served as First-year Spanish supervisor at the University of Tennessee from 2011 to 2013. In 2013, he joined the Faculty at Georgian Court University, in New Jersey, where he is Assistant Professor of World Languages and Cultures.
By Brian Garcia
Brian Garcia is an interdisciplinary artist whose work lives at the intersections of mental health, race, gender and sexualities. Garcia’s work has been performed internationally at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (New York City), Links Hall (Chicago) and he continues a passion for community-based theater through Brouhaha International (Liverpool, UK), UDESC & UniRio (Florianópolis & Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). This work is informed by theories of affect, brown-queerness and depression as proposed by members of the Feel Tank Chicago, including José Esteban Muñoz and expanded by Ann Cvetkovich’s Depression: A Public Feeling. In the scope of depression as a state of “impasse”, Brian hopes this work provides refuge for the depressed mind on a journey to find alternatives.
Short Story
By Edwin Murillo
Edwin Murillo is Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. He received his doctorate in Romance Studies from the University of Miami. Most of his work focuses on Latin American Existentialism and his articles have appeared in Hispanófila, Crítica hispánica, and Hispanic Journal, among many others. His poetry, written in Spanglish and Portuñol, has appeared in various journals and his short stories have appeared in Diálogo and Confluencia. At UTC, he teaches Spanish language, composition, and literature courses.
Poetry
By Monica Montelongo Flores
Monica Montelongo Flores is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic American Literature in the department of English at California State University, Stanislaus. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Texas Tech University and her specializations include U.S. Literature, Film and Media Studies, Latinx Cultural Studies, and the American West.
By Jackie Cuevas
Jackie Cuevas’s writing has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Stone Canoe, and the introduction to the third edition of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera. Cuevas is the author of Post-Borderlandia: Chicana Literature and Gender Variant Critique (Rutgers University Press, 2018). Cuevas is a co-founder of Evelyn Street Press, member of Macondo, and faculty member at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
By Maria Luisa Arroyo
Born in Manatí, Puerto Rico and raised in the North End of Springfield (MA), María Luisa Arroyo was educated at Colby (BA), Tufts (MA) and Harvard (ABD) in German, her third language. She earned her MFA in poetry from the low-residency Solstice MFA program at Pine Manor College. In recognition of her community-based poetry workshops and readings, María Luisa has received many awards, among them, Poet Laureate (2014-2016) of Springfield (MA) and 2016 NEPR Arts & Humanities Award. Her poems appear in many journals, including CALYX: A Journal of Art & Literature by Women. Her poetry collections include Gathering Words; Recogiendo Palabras (Bilingual Review, 2008) and the chapbooks Flight (2016) and Destierro Means More than Exile (2018). María Luisa Arroyo is Assistant Professor of Writing and First-Year Studies at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, MA.
