War Echoes

Gender and Militarization in U.S. Latina/o Cultural Production

By Ariana E. Vigil

Rutgers University Press

War Echoes examines how Latina/o cultural production has engaged with U.S. militarism in the post–Viet Nam era. Analyzing literature alongside film, memoir, and activism, Ariana E. Vigil highlights the productive interplay among social, political, and cultural movements while exploring Latina/o responses to U.S. intervention in Central America and the Middle East. These responses evolved over the course of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—from support for anti-imperial war, as seen in Alejandro Murguia's Southern Front, to the disavowal of all war articulated in works such as Demetria Martinez’s Mother Tongue and Camilo Mejia’s Road from Ar Ramadi. With a focus on how issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect and are impacted by war and militarization, War Echoes illustrates how this country’s bellicose foreign policies have played an integral part in shaping U.S. Latina/o culture and identity and given rise to the creation of works that recognize how militarized violence and values, such as patriarchy, hierarchy, and obedience, are both enacted in domestic spheres and propagated abroad.

Reviews
Author

Bravo! In War Echoes we finally see an honest and courageous account of the productive tensions and uneasy alliances among U.S. Latina/os as they engage the problem of U.S. military intervention in Central America and the Middle East. Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernandez, author of Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries

War Echoes is an innovative investigation of war and militarization in U.S. Latina/o expressive cultures. Detailing how literary and film representations are linked to and informative for transnational social justice movements, Vigil’s landmark study is sure to influence and inspire. Richard T. Rodríguez, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

War Echoes provides a well-grounded assessment of theoretical concepts … Vigil's criticism of the nation-state and the heteronormative structures of the military and family are clear and well reference. Journal of American History

ARIANA E. VIGIL is an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

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