Living in Spanglish The Search for Latino Identity in America

To be Latino in the United States has meant a fierce iden-ti-fi-cation with one's roots, with the language, art, and food their people brought with them. America is a patchwork of Hispanic sensibilities-from Puerto Rican nationalists in New York to newly arrived Mexicans in the Rio Grande valley-that has so far resisted homogenization while managing to absorb much of the mainstream culture. In Living in Spanglish, Morales pins down a diverse community-of Dominicans, Mexicans, Colombians, Cubans, Salvadorans, and Puerto Ricans-that he insists has more common interests to unify it than traditions to divide it. He calls this sensibility Spanglish, 'a feeling, an attitude that is quintessentially American.'

Ed Morales is a Village Voice staff reporter who has contributed to numerous publications, including Rolling Stone, The Miami Herald, San Francisco Examiner, The Los Angeles Time and The Nation. He is also a poet whose work has appeared in Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets CafT and a fiction writer included in Iguana Dreams and Boricuas.