Para Español Oprima El Número Dos: Transnational Translation and U.S. Latino/a Literature

Abstract

In “Beyond Discipline? Globalization and the Future of English,” an essay about the changing status of literary studies in English, Paul Jay refers to a relatively recent explosion of literature in English produced in the English-speaking postcolonial world. This literature, he says, has been coming into Britain and the United States from India, the Middle East, Canada, Africa, the South Pacific (Australia), the Philippines, and Guam, and it is reshaping and reorganizing the disciplines of British and U.S. literatures. No longer, he argues, are these disciplines limited only to cultural products produced inside the national borders of their respective countries, presumably united by common themes, values, a national language, and literature. British and U.S. literatures are also projecting expressive material from outside their national borders that is transforming them into open-ended cultural systems in a transnational market economy. Jay’s point is that British and U.S. literary studies in the modern era of globalization are “becoming defined less by nation than by language” (2001, 33). I want to take advantage of Jay’s observation concerning the ascendancy of language in a global world to offer some ideas on the Spanish language, acts of translation, and U.S. Latina and Latino writing.