We the Barbarians: Three Mexican Writers in the Twenty-First Century

We the Barbarians is a book that analyzes the narrative production of three prominent authors in the latest wave of Mexican fiction: Yuri Herrera, Fernanda Melchor, and Valeria Luiselli. It explores the ways in which the transformations of national culture intersect with global developments, discussing the insertion of literary works at transnational levels. The uses of language reveal the experimental integration of regional idiolects, colloquialisms, slang, and neologisms derived from multiple and diverse cultural registers. The critical and theoretical approaches used explore a variety of alternative symbolic representations of topics such as nationalism, community, and affect in times impacted by systemic violence, precarity, and radical inequality. The book seeks to more broadly theorize the relationship between literature and the social in the twenty-first century.

Format: Hardback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 15 April 2024
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

We embark on a meticulous and comprehensive exploration of three prominent authors in the latest wave of Mexican fiction: Yuri Herrera, Fernanda Melchor, and Valeria Luiselli. Originally published in Mexico in December 2021, the work is divided into three parts, corresponding to the analysis of each author's narrative production. The book analyzes all the literary works published by Herrera, Melchor, and Luiselli from the beginning of their writing careers until 2021, allowing for a diachronic interpretation of their respective narrative projects and comparative approaches to their aesthetic and ideological contours.

Characterized by the fragmentation of civil society and the decomposition of the myths that accompanied the consolidation of the modern nation, Mexican visual and literary arts have been exploring a myriad of representational avenues to approach the phenomena of violence, institutional decay, and political instability.

We the Barbarians analyze the ways in which the transformations of national culture intersect with global developments, discussing the insertion of literary works at transnational levels. In the works of the authors studied here, the uses of language reveal the experimental integration of regional idiolects, colloquialisms, slang, and neologisms derived from multiple and diverse cultural registers, including the terminologies of social media. Urban and rural subcultures interplay with traditional currents and with the languages of film, performance, and popular music. Thematically, innovations introduced through the genres of chronicles, science fiction, journalism, and autobiographical writing produce powerful combinations in which canonical authors are re-interpreted and re-vitalized for a changing and diverse readership.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780826506702