Ilan Stavans - Latinos in the United States

Also by Ilan Stavans

FictionThe Disappearance * The One-Handed Pianist and Other Stories

NonfictionThe Riddle of Cantinflas * Dictionary Days * On Borrowed Words * Spanglish * The Hispanic Condition * Art and Anger * Resurrecting Hebrew * A Critics Journey * The Inveterate Dreamer * Octavio Paz: A Meditation * Imagining Columbus * Bandido * Lotera! (with Teresa Villegas) * Jos Vasconcelos: The Prophet of Race * Return to Centro Histrico * Singers Typewriter and Mine * Gabriel Garca Mrquez: The Early Years, 19291970 * The United States of Mestizo * Reclaiming Travel (with Joshua Ellison) * Quixote: The Novel and the World * Borges, the Jew * I Love My Selfie (with Adl)

ConversationsKnowledge and Censorship (with Vernica Albin) * What is la hispanidad? (with Ivn Jaksi) * Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations (with Neal Sokol) * With All Thine Heart (with Mordecai Drache) * Conversations with Ilan Stavans * Love and Language (with Vernica Albin) * Muy Pop! (with Frederick Aldama) * Thirteen Ways of Looking at Latino Art (with Jorge J. E. Gracia) * Laughing Matters (with Frederick Aldama)

Childrens BookGolemito (with Teresa Villegas)

AnthologiesThe Norton Anthology of Latino Literature * Tropical Synagogues * The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays * The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature * Lengua Fresca (with Harold Augenbraum) * Wchale! * The Scroll and the Cross * The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories * Mutual Impressions * Growing Up Latino (with Harold Augenbraum) * The FSG Books of Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry * Oy, Caramba!

Graphic NovelsLatino USA (with Lalo Alcaraz) * Mr. Spic Goes to Washington (with Roberto Weil) * Once @ 9:53 am (with Marcelo Brodsky) * El Iluminado (with Steve Sheinkin) * A Most Imperfect Union (with Lalo Alcaraz) * Angelitos (with Santiago Cohen)

TranslationsSentimental Songs, by Felipe Alfau * The Plain in Flames, by Juan Rulfo (with Harold Augenbraum) * The Underdogs, by Mariano Azuela (with Anna More) * Lazarillo de Tormes * El Little Prncipe, by Antoine de Saint Exupry

EditionsCesar Vallejo: Spain, Take This Chalice from Me * The Poetry of Pablo Neruda * Encyclopedia Latina (4 volumes) * Pablo Neruda: I Explain a Few Things * The Collected Stories of Calvert Casey * Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories (3 volumes) * Cesar Chavez: An Organizers Tale * Rubn Daro: Selected Writings * Pablo Neruda: All the Odes * Latin Music (2 volumes)

GeneralThe Essential Ilan Stavans

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Oxford University Press 2018

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stavans, Ilan, author.

Title: Latinos in the United States : what everyone needs to know / Ilan Stavans.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018. | Series: What everyone needs to know | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017011697| ISBN 9780190670184 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190670191 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190670207 (Updf) | ISBN 9780190670214 (Epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Hispanic AmericansHistory. | Hispanic AmericansSocial life and customs. | Hispanic AmericansSocial conditions.

Classification: LCC E184.S75 S763 2018 | DDC 973/.0468dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011697

To mi cuate, Frederick Luis Aldama

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Mark Twain

Walt Whitman once said that the genius of America is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people. Indeed, because the common people are permanently on the move, America itself exists in a state of becomingthat is, it is never static, it is constantly changing.

That change is tangible in its social mobility. One might be born at the bottom of the economic scale but, unlike what happens in other parts of the world, it doesnt mean that person remains there forever. Just as money at the top moves around, incentives at the bottom serve as an engine of progress.

Progressthe idea of it!gives the nation its traction. That progress is alluring to others elsewhere in the planet who dream of a better life. They have been coming, those common people, as immigrants to these shores to partake in the dream of progress.

Yet the question emerges: is mobility attainable to all? Does el Sueo Americano, the American Dream, still serve as a motivator?

That question is at the heart of the age of Donald Trump. To understand its impact, it is important to keep in mind that a dramatic shift, in terms of immigration, took place in the second half of the 20th century. Until then and with the exception of the slave trade, the majority of newcomers to these shores had as their point of departure the Old World, such as places like Ireland, Italy, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Greece, and Poland. In racial terms, people were for the most part Caucasians. The response to their arrival was based on class and costumes: they were discriminated against because they were poor and illiterate, and they brought with them different cultural attitudes. After World War II, an entirely different wave of immigrants, with different skin colors, entered the country: people from places like Korea and China, India and Pakistan, Vietnam and Cambodia, Nigeria and Senegal, Lebanon and Iran, the Francophone and Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and everywhere in Latin America.

As a result, America has been undergoing a redefinition of its national identity, one in which multiculturalism plays a central role. Metropolises like Los Angeles, San Antonio, Houston, Miami, and New York are no longer white bastions but rainbow cities defined by ethnic differences. And the social change has taken place, albeit at a slower speed, in rural areas, where small communities have experienced the demographic growth of ethnic minorities.