This volume of essays is the seventh in the series produced under the auspices of the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project at the University of Houston. This ongoing and comprehensive program seeks to locate, identify, preserve, and disseminate the literary contributions of U.S. Latinos from the Spanish Colonial Period to contemporary times.
The eleven essays included in this volume examine key issues relevant to the exploration of Hispanic literary production in the United States, including cultural identity, exile thought, class and women's issues.
Originally presented at the ninth biennial conference of the Recovery Project, ''Encuentros y Reencuentros: Making Common Ground,'' held in St. Louis in collaboration with the Western Historical Association's annual meeting in 2006, the essays are divided into four sections: ''History, Culture and Ideology;'' ''Women's Voices: Gender, Politics and Culture;'' ''Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Literature and History;'' and ''Language Representation and Translation.'' The work of scholars involved in making available the written record of Hispanic populations in the U.S. is critical for any comprehensive understanding of the U.S. experience, particularly in the West where the country's history is intricately linked with that of Hispanic peoples since the sixteenth century.
In their introduction, editors Gerald Poyo and Tomas Ybarra-Frausto outline the goals and challenges of the Recovery Project to promote scholarly collaboration in the integration of research and recovered Hispanic texts in various disciplines, including history and Latina/o studies.