The Turn to Aesthetics in Latinx Literary and Cultural Studies

In addition to Santiago, Rodríguez lucidly examines Brandon Skyhorse, author of Madonnas of Echo Park (2010), as an embodiment of “the tension between a blood identity and a lived identity” (43), thus challenging the expectations of editors and presses that Latinx authors should write about Latinx topics (47). [...]in the last chapter, Rodríguez privileges the experimental nature of select Latinx poetry in the works of Eduardo Corral, Rosa Alcalá, and Amanda Calderón, who “in their lyric writing have freed themselves from a burden of cultural representation” (124). Yet, who can overlook the poetic effect of repetition in Pedro Pietri’s “Puerto Rican Obituary,” for instance, or the ways in which code-switching and alliteration merge in Alurista’s Floricanto en Aztlán? I would insert Rodríguez’s fascinating intervention into any discussion about Latinx literature by first recognizing the longer, historical arc that is the literary production of our writers, poets, and authors since the late 1960s, to select one particular moment of artistic renaissance. Alvarado’s book, Abject Performances, responds to Rodríguez’s conundrum as cultural studies constitutes an alternative to the limits of literary studies.