This course will introduce the student to a diverse body of work by Latino and Latina writers in the United States. Latino and Latina literatures share a history of conflict, resistance, and cultural mestizaje, or mixture, and this course will examine the ways in which a select group of authors acknowledge that history and attempt to shape it to their own personal, literary and political ends. For some understanding of context, we will turn to the facts and pressures of immigration, exile, assimilation, bilingualism, and political and economic oppression as those factors variously affect the means and modes of the particular literary productions we're concerned with. At the same time, the course will emphasize the invented nature of Latino/a literary and cultural "traditions"; more importantly, it will investigate the place of those inventions in the larger framework of Latino and Latina political projects such as anti-colonialism, civil rights, and feminism. In other words, the course will investigate how this literature participates in the construction and deconstruction of "The Latino" in the United States. Will include such authors as Jos# Antonio Villarreal, Piri Thomas, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Oscar Hijuelos, Gustavo P#rez-Firmat, Julia Alvarez, Gloria Anzald#a, Josephina Niggli, Arturo Islas, Sandra Cisneros, and Cristina Garc#a. Requirements: three essays, a series of quizzes, and a final exam. Prerequisite: English 101.