LIT 357 Violence of Language: U.S. Latino/a Street Literature

3 hours 

This course will explore the ways in which "street life" creates avenues for self social and historical knowledge through literary expression. The narrative challenge for U.S. Latino/a writers is to take a language of the everyday and reshape it into a literary form. Several questions will impel and inform our readings: How does street language translate into poetics? What constitutes knowledge in and of the street? Where does street literature fit within canonical American aesthetics?