My essay, “In pursuit of property and forgiveness: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and In the Heights” appears in Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies (2021) from NYU Press and edited by Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas and Mérida M. Rúa.
I’m honored to have my work appear alongside that of Suzanne Oboler, Maritza Cárdenas, Pedro Cabán, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Lisa Marie Cacho, Frances R. Aparicio, Lorgia Garcia Peña, and many others.
Description of Collection: This groundbreaking work offers a multidisciplinary, social-science oriented perspective on Latinx studies, including the social histories and contemporary lives of a diverse range of Latina and Latino populations. Editors Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas and Mérida M. Rúa have crafted an anthology that is unique in both form and content. The book combines previously published canonical pieces with original, cutting-edge works created for this volume. The sections of the text are arranged thematically as critical dialogues, each with a brief preface that provides context and a conceptual direction for the scholarly conversation that ensues.
The editors frame the volume around the “humanistic social sciences,” using the term to highlight the historical and social contexts under which expressive cultural forms and archival records are created.
Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies masterfully sheds light on the diversity and complexity of the everyday lives of Latinx populations, the political economic structures that shape enduring racialization and cultural stereotyping, and the continuing efforts to carve out new lives as diasporic, transnational, global, and colonial subjects.