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The Central American Novel in the Twenty-First Century, 2000–2020
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The Central American Novel in the Twenty-First Century, 2000–2020

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2024) | Viewed by 4573

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Raquel Patricia Chiquillo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of History, Humanities and Language, University of Houston-Downtown, 1 Main Street, Suite #1023-S, Houston, TX 77002, USA
Interests: Central American literature; novel; narrative; contemporary Latin American literature

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Historically, the novel in Central America has manifested itself in a series of brilliant flashes against a sparse literary background. Continuity in the literary production of this region has always been difficult, but in the 1990s a series of Central American writers began producing literature (both short stories and novels) that caught the attention of literary critics both at home and abroad. Novelists such as Horacio Castellanos Moya, Gioconda Belli, Jacinta Escudos, Manlio Argueta and Sergio Ramírez became well-known and lauded for their literary works. In the twenty-first century, the Central American novel has continued to flourish and, it could be argued, has finally come into its own. Both established and new novelists have consistently published novels that address topics such as  identity, memory, war, feminism, migration, and gender, including philosophical and metaphysical issues, such as the nature of time and reality. In this Special Issue of Humanities, we invite contributors to write rigorous scholarly articles exploring any aspect of any Central American novel published between 2000 and 2020, while building on the existing canon of literary criticism. A variety of approaches are welcome, including comparative, theoretical and linguistic approaches. These article will be collated in a Special Issue that showcases the themes and contexts presented in the modern Central American novel.

Dr. Raquel Patricia Chiquillo
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information 

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Central American literature
  • novel
  • narrative
  • contemporary
  • Latin American literature
  • 21st Century

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 274 KiB  
Article
Performing Distinction in Big Banana: Culture at the Margins of Visibility
by Andrea Martinez Teruel
Humanities 2024, 13(1), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13010031 - 01 Feb 2024
Viewed by 1066
Abstract
Central American writers have perceptively engaged with the concept of world literature from their minor positionality. For instance, as implied in the mocking undertone of its title, Roberto Quesada’s Big Banana (2000) deals with being at the edge of the periphery, following a [...] Read more.
Central American writers have perceptively engaged with the concept of world literature from their minor positionality. For instance, as implied in the mocking undertone of its title, Roberto Quesada’s Big Banana (2000) deals with being at the edge of the periphery, following a Honduran migrant in the Latin American community in New York. Quesada explores how the protagonist channels his “deseo de mundo”, to use Mariano Siskind’s words, into a strategy of performing distinction to carve out a place for himself in a cosmopolitan society. Compounding “banana republic”—an expression coined by O. Henry, inspired by Honduras—with “The Big Apple”, Big Banana’s title underscores the book’s play with cultural registers and national and worldly identities. The growing scholarship on Central American and U.S. Central American literature has analyzed the novel through the lens of coloniality, the limits of solidarity, the experience of the Central American diaspora, and as “denuncia social”. My article instead traces how cultural productions acquire different valences each time they cross the center–periphery border in the performance of distinction that Big Banana and its protagonist carry out in response to their doubly peripheral position. In other words, this essay is concerned with the novel’s problematic instrumentalization of Western hegemonic culture—both highbrow and commercial popular culture—to make claims of worldliness and carve a space for itself in world literary circuits. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Central American Novel in the Twenty-First Century, 2000–2020)
19 pages, 337 KiB  
Article
The Burden of the Past: Globalized Crime, Trauma, and Patriarchal Violence in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Moronga (2018)
by Julia González Calderón
Humanities 2024, 13(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13010014 - 15 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1232
Abstract
This article examines how trauma, crime, violence, and masculinity are connected in the novel Moronga (2018) by Honduran–Salvadoran author Horacio Castellanos Moya. The novel highlights the ways in which, thirty years after the signing of the Peace Accords, war trauma continues to oppress [...] Read more.
This article examines how trauma, crime, violence, and masculinity are connected in the novel Moronga (2018) by Honduran–Salvadoran author Horacio Castellanos Moya. The novel highlights the ways in which, thirty years after the signing of the Peace Accords, war trauma continues to oppress survivors of the civil war and determine their daily lives, beyond temporal and geographical borders. The novel points out how the transition into the neoliberal economy has transnationalized all aspects of the Salvadoran economy, including that of organized crime, which has undergone globalization, as have trauma and Salvadoran communities. Through the novel’s depiction of violence and crime, the author suggests that only those who perpetuate patriarchal violence in postwar diasporic communities will thrive, whereas those who aspire to carry out memory labor and peacefully heal the emotional wounds of the past will be defeated by the perverse logic of the system. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Central American Novel in the Twenty-First Century, 2000–2020)
10 pages, 269 KiB  
Article
Violence and Post-National Costa Rican Identity in Limón Reggae
by Anne Marie Stachura
Humanities 2023, 12(4), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040056 - 28 Jun 2023
Viewed by 793
Abstract
Anacristina Rossi’s novels have received critical attention relating to their presentation of pan-Caribbean identity and other challenges to the mythical national identity of the tico. Building on scholarship by Manzari and Kearns, I argue that Limón Reggae presents a representation of the post-national [...] Read more.
Anacristina Rossi’s novels have received critical attention relating to their presentation of pan-Caribbean identity and other challenges to the mythical national identity of the tico. Building on scholarship by Manzari and Kearns, I argue that Limón Reggae presents a representation of the post-national community and that the violent conditions that mark the protagonist’s life not only debunk the national myth of a peaceful Costa Rica, but also comment on the impossibility of belonging in the post-national community. The pain that the protagonist experiences as a result of her interpersonal relationships reflects the difficulty of forming a community after the bounds of the nation have become less defined by globalization, even to individuals who come from groups not traditionally included in the definition of a Costa Rican citizen, such as the protagonist. With the breakdown of categories of affiliation across lines of geography, race, language, and class, the protagonist is able to move easily between places and groups, but her encounters with ‘others’ are complicated by the post-national condition. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Central American Novel in the Twenty-First Century, 2000–2020)
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