As the movement expanded, the term "Latino" came into use to encompass writers of various Latin American backgrounds, including Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and others.
Notable writers include: Elizabeth Acevedo, Julia Alvarez, Gloria Anzaldua, Rudolfo Anaya, Giannina Braschi, Julia de Burgos, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Díaz, Cristina García, Oscar Hijuelos, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Piri Thomas, Rudy Ruiz, Denise Chavez, Cherrie Moraga, Kathleen Alcalá, Carmen Maria Machado, and Edmundo Paz Soldan, among others.
[7] The literary mixing of US and Spanish American culture, history, and social concerns is intensified by the inception of Latino literature written in English in the second half of the 20th century, in which authors such as Cristina García, Julia Álvarez, Gloria Anzaldúa, Oscar Hijuelos, Piri Thomas, Pedro Pietri, Miguel Piñero, and, of course, the aforementioned Díaz and Alarcón all begin to write texts that speak to Latino experience both in the United States and abroad in Latin America and the Caribbean.
[9] There is a plethora of scholarship about Latino people in a range of fields, including literature, theater, popular culture, religion, Spanglish linguistics, politics, and urban planning.
In the 1990s, Sandra Cisneros and Julia Alvarez helped blaze the trail for Latina authors with novels such as In the Time of the Butterflies, The House on Mango Street, and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, winning praise from critics and gracing best-seller lists across the Americas.
[10] Precursors of Latino philosophy and Third World Feminisms are Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, best known for their collaboration of groundbreaking feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back.
[11] Groundbreaking Chicana books that are still widely studied include: The Last of the Menu Girls (Denise Chavez), Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Gloria Anzaldúa), and So Far from God (Ana Castillo).
[13][14] Other novels of note are Rosario Ferré's Eccentric Neighborhoods, Luis Rafael Sánchez's Macho Camacho's Beat, and Richie Narvaez's Hipster Death Rattle.
As no term has yet been standardized in academic publications, and given that this article does not explicitly refer to queer Latino authors, I will maintain Luis’ terminology throughout the essay, while reminding the reader that the term “Latino literature” is intended here to be absolutely inclusive, referring the work of male, female, and queer authors who do not identify within a binary gender classification system.
"[8] Dominican-American author Junot Díaz, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his 2007 novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which tells the story of an overweight Dominican boy growing up as a social outcast in New Jersey.
[15] Prominent Cuban-American works include Roberto G. Fernandez’ Raining Backwards (1988), Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban (1992), and Oscar Hijuelos’ The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989); and their colleagues in poetry Ana Menéndez, Richard Blanco, and Rafael Campo.
(xiii)[19] "As a zone of interpenetration between two previously distinct peoples.” However, partly because of a “stigma” attached to the term frontier (the backlash against the Turner Thesis), historians have suggested alternatives such as the “contact zone,” or Richard White’s “Middle Space.”1 Borderlands has come to be favored by many anthropologists over frontiers because it suggests a series of “contested boundaries” which “define a geopolitical space,” as Bradley Parker puts it (2006: 80).
"[19] In recent years, a new wave of writers has emerged in the genre of Latino coming-of-age novels, exploring the experiences of young female protagonists as they navigate the challenges of school and biculturalism.
Some notable works in this category include "I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter" by Erika L. Sánchez (2017) and "The Poet X" by Elizabeth Acevedo (2018), both of which have garnered critical acclaim and captured the attention of readers from diverse backgrounds.
"Bless Me, Ultima" is a renowned Chicano novel written by Rudolfo Anaya, which is commonly included in the curriculum of middle and high schools across America.
[25] Salvadoran-American poets such as William Archila, Claudia Castro Luna,[26] Jose B. Gonzalez, Leticia Hernandez Linares,[27] and Javier Zamora published poetry collections that reflected on the Salvadoran Civil War and their own migrations.
This development is significant for both the literary and cultural worlds, as it expands the representation of Latino voices in popular genres and provides new avenues for creative expression.
[30] Edited by Matthew David Goodwin and with an introduction by Frederick Luis Aldama, the anthology features a range of speculative and fantasy fiction (i.e., ghosts, aliens, superheroes, robots, talking sardines) written by Junot Díaz, Giannina Braschi, Kathleen Alcalá, Richie Narvaez, Carmen Maria Machado, Ana Castillo, Edmundo Paz Soldan, and emerging Latino short story authors such as Ernest Hogan and Sabrina Vourvoulias.
[31][32] Latino speculative, fantasy, and weird fiction bring humor to fantastical, futuristic, comedic, and stark political subjects, offering readers strange new concepts such as: Los cosmos azteca, shape shifting robots, pre-Columbian holobooks, talking sardines, and patron saints that are cybernetically wired.
[30] Cultural theorist Christopher Gonzalez argues that Latino fantasy writing provides necessary excursions into the realm of impossible in order for writers and readers to cope with 21st-century realities.
[33] Latino authors write about interconnected social justice, familial, and psychological issues (i.e., colonialism, migration, racism, mass incarceration, and misogyny).
[34] Giannina Braschi conjures, in United States of Banana, a bizarre cast of characters including things, creatures, and people (i.e., Cockroach, Exterminator, Reptiles, Lady Liberty, Fidel Castro, Hu Jintao, Barack Obama, Hamlet, Zarathustra, Pablo Neruda, and Rubén Darío).