Decolonizing Literature

The House on Mango Street is a 1984 novel by Mexican-American author Sandra Cisneros. Structured as a series of vignettes, it tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, a 12-year-old Chicana girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago. Based in part on Cisneros's own experience, the novel follows Esperanza over the span of one year in her life, as she enters adolescence and begins to face the realities of life as a young woman in a poor and patriarchal community. Elements of Mexican-American culture and themes of social class, race, sexuality, identity, and gender are interwoven throughout the novel.

This book is recommended for young adult audiences.

Originally written in French, Island of Shattered Dreams is the first novel ever published by a Tahitian writer, Chantal Spitz! Set in the background of a French Polynesia in the years leading up to the first of many, nuclear tests over the course of multiple decades -  the novel explores a doomed love story between two characters from opposing backgrounds, and the very real realities of their family saga. 

Blending French prose and Tahitian lyrical poetry, Chantal Spitz weaves a story through the unique blend of her languages, now translated from French into English. The reaction to the novel’s publication was very polarized due to its highly critical opinion of the French government, a past colonial power in the region. 

This book is recommended for adult audiences.

while they sleep (under the bed is another country) by author Raquel Rivera is a bilingual collection in English and Spanish of prose poems and snippets of dialogue that meditate on the impacts of hurricane María’s lasting impact, alongside the real life impact of colonial trauma of Puerto Rico as an American colony. The novel is set up to be written in English, with responses answering in Spanish.

“The bed on which America sleeps, and which America has made, is built on the fear that the nations it has oppressed will rise up against it, a monstrous shadow in a child’s nightmare. Written in English, while they sleep points to an imperialist American identity: the dormant body of the text. Answering in Spanish, under the bed is another country is the footnote, the monster under the bed, the colony: Puerto Rico”

This book is recommended for young adult audiences.

In this brand new, pre-columbian, coming-of-age story, we follow the Nahua icon found on the modern Mexican,100-peso bill, Nezahualcoyotl, as he navigates the trials in his life from the ages of 13 to 23. As the crown prince, Nezahualcoyotl must embark on his rite of passage to become a man, when everything goes wrong and everything changes. 

Now in hiding, he sheds his name and waits until it is his time to return. 

While most of the four-part story is told through prose, scattered verse showcases Nezahualcoyotl’s poetic gifts (including some direct translations of Nahuatl poems). Political machinations abound alongside an exceedingly high body count. Bowles deftly uses the first-person present tense to add immediacy to Nezahualcoyotl’s otherwise distant story.

This book is recommended for young adult audiences.