The Routledge Handbook of Latinx Life Writing

The Routledge Handbook of Latinx Life Writing provides an in-depth introduction to Latinx life writing, taking a historical approach to the study of a variety of key Latinx life writers, genres, and thematic concerns. This volume includes chapters on fundamental genres of Latinx life writing including memoir, autobiography, oral history, testimonio, comics and graphic texts, poetry of protest, and theatre to more fully depict the breadth, dynamism, and vibrancy of Latinx life writing. Latinx people continuously engaged in the empowering act of telling their stories and narrating their lives, producing writing that at various times and in various ways expressed their joy, expressed their rage and anguish, and ultimately, asserted their subjectivity all the while indelibly contributing to the American literary landscape.

Christine J. Fernández is an Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her scholarship focuses on Hemispheric connections between Latin America and the United States and its intersections with gender studies and life writing. Her work has been published in journals such as eHumanista, Studies on Latin American Popular Culture, and Hispania.

Maria Joaquina Villaseñor (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley) is Associate Dean of Liberal Arts at Sierra College. Previously she was Professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies in the Department of Humanities and Communication and co-founder of the Ethnic Studies Working Group at California State University, Monterey Bay. Villaseñor is the co-editor of Latinx Experiences: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2023), a co-author of The Historical Dictionary of U.S. Latino Literature (2017); a Latina life writer herself, her personal essays have been published in journals including The Acentos Review. Dr. Villaseñor’s family is from Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, Mexico. She is a twin, a mother of twins, and a lifelong Californian.