American Latino literature has focused more on undocumented immigrants

*The literature of the undocumented has “become an important piece of the immigration policy debate that often can be discussed only in black-and-white legal terms.” VL

By George Diepenbrock, The University of Kansas News

LAWRENCE — As immigration policy has become prominent in American society in recent decades, the debate and social justice issues surrounding immigrants have become a larger part of American Latino literature, a University of Kansas scholar finds.

As part of her new book, “Documenting the Undocumented: Latino/a Narratives and Social Justice in the Era of Operation Gatekeeper,” Marta Caminero-Santangelo examines how writers have increasingly expressed their solidarity with undocumented immigrants, particularly after heightened border security in the 1990s that led to more immigrant deaths, immigration raids of meat-packing plants in the early 2000s and the persistently high number of deportations.

“It used to be that most prominent Latino writers wrote about their national origin identities quite a bit, but they didn’t write about what that larger group identity meant,” said Caminero-Santangelo, professor of English. “In addition, they weren’t really representing the issue of illegal immigration at all.”

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She looks at the work of Junot Díaz, Cristina García, Julia Alvarez and other Latina and Latino authors who are U.S. citizens and have adapted their storytelling to focus on and humanize undocumented immigrants who often have little voice in American society . . . READ MORE