Harold Augenbraum

Growing Up Latino is one of the original efforts within the literary realm to combine the works of various Spanish-decent cultures into a single volume. The introduction clearly states a desire to highlight the commonalities between Chicano, Caribbean, Central, and South American peoples and literary styles under one term: Latino. It contains works by all of the recent heavy-hitters selected to highlight magical realism, immigrant narratives, and descriptions of latino home life. Much of this is an enjoyable read, and while the introduction is dated, it does show the progression of literary criticism around these authors when compared with more recent writings. Enough of the short stories are entertaining outside of the scholarly intent of the collection that I'd suggest this to anyone into short fiction as pleasure reading.… (meer)