Latin American and Latino/a Studies

The Handbook includes twenty-three essays, discussing various aspects of Latino life and history, from literature, popular culture, and music, to religion, philosophy, and language identity. The articles cover important themes such as the Chicano Movement,gender and race relations, the changes in demographics, the tension between rural and urban communities, immigration and the US/Mexico border, the legacy of colonialism, and the controversy surrounding Spanglish.

A three-volume set, the collection offers profiles of notable figures from the 19th century through today. Many individuals are famous in such high-profile professions as entertainment, music, politics, and sports, while others have received less attention but made important contributions to civil rights and science or helped pave the way for others in their community in areas such as education, law, and business.

This encyclopedia provides a chronological overview of Latino/a history beginning with the indigenous populations of the Americas through the present day. It is divided into time period, such as Pre-Colonial Era to Spanish Empire, pre-1521-1810, and covers a variety of themes relevant to the time period. Each entry has a chronology, a main narrative, biographies of notable figures, and suggested further readings, as well as one or more primary sources that offer additional context or information on the given event.

The collection explores themes from the Chicana/o identity to Caribbean and Central American diasporic literature, and from Latina/o letters to bilingual texts and graphic novels. Issues such as feminism, LGBTQA groups, indigeneity, environmental justice,social movements, migration, and US-Mexico borderlands are covered in the encyclopedia. Each article paints a nuanced and in-depth portrait of Latina/o literary history in a dynamic and engaging field of study that is at once highly popular, historical, and theoretical.