Inter-American Literature: An Antidote to the Arrogance of Culture

IT IS ALWAYS A COMFORTING FEELING to know that one is not a voice crying in the wilderness, which is how I felt when I read William C. Spengemann's article, What is Literature?1 The author not only wrestles with the problematic definition of the terms American and literature, but calls attention to the unconscious hubris of the average citizen of the United States, who has appropriated the word American for his or her sole usage, to the exclusion of all other hemispheric residents. As a trained Hispanist, many of my classroom efforts above and beyond the teaching of language and have always been directed towards a broadening of the ethnocentric and monocultural viewpoints held by many of my students, whose knowledge of Latin America is usually almost nonexistent. My messianic urge to redefine the concept of Americanness led me to develop a course in comparative North/South which has not only been a joy to teach but, judging by course evaluations, has also proved to be a stimulating experience for the students as well. Only after beginning to investigate the relationships between these literatures did I discover how unresearched a field it is, mainly because few scholars thus far have paid much attention to the common denominators of the experience. Hence my gratification when Spengemann echoed concerns similar to my own: By identifying America with the United States, ... we forgo any possibility of comparing the developments of English, French, Spanish and Portuguese literatures in the New World, although some knowledge of these parallel developments would seem indispensable to our expressed aim of measuring the impact that America has had upon our literature (p. 124). Although these revisionist ideals had been with me for quite a while, the actual course owed its creation to somewhat baser economic pressures: the necessity of formulating a successful grant proposal to help underwrite a year's sabbatical leave