Stavans Unbound: The Critic Between Two Canons

Twenty-five years ago, Ilan Stavans published his first book, Imagining Columbus: The Literary Voyage (1993). Since then, Stavans has become a polarizing figure, dismissed and praised in equal measure, a commanding if contested intellectual whose work as a cultural critic has been influential in the fields of Latino and Jewish studies, politics, immigration, religion, language, and identity. He can be credited for bringing attention to Jewish Latin America and issues like Spanglish, he has been instrumental in shaping a certain view of Latino Studies in universities across the United States as well abroad, he has anthologized much of Latino and Latin American Jewish literature and he has engaged in contemporary pop culture via the graphic novel. He was the host of a PBS show called Conversations with Ilan Stavans, and has had his fiction adapted into the stage and the big screen. The man, as one critic stated, clearly has energy to burn and it does not appear to be abating. This collection celebrates twenty-five years of Stavans's work with essays that describe the good and the bad, the inspired and the pedestrian, the worthwhile and the questionable.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Frederick Aldama Introduction Bridget Kevane Life as Role Play: Ilan Stavans, the Life(long) Writer Isabel Durán El Iluminado: Ilan Stavans and the Incongruity of the Antihero Irina Troconis Life, Death, and Apotheosis of Words: DIC·TION·AR·Y DAYS Angelina Muñiz-Huberman (translated by Miriam Huberman) Cave Paintings: Cervantes, Turbans, and Heresy Diana de Armas Wilson Freedom to Pursue the Impossible Dream: Ilan Stavans and Don Quixote Iván Jaksić Stavans Does Quixote William Childers Ilan Stavans, Tongue Snatcher Steven G. Kellman El español y el spanglish en la era de Trump Silvia Betti “A World Defined by mmigration”: Ambivalence, Translationality, and Mestizaje in Ilan Stavans Ivonne M. García Translation as a Way to Write the City Regina Galasso Returning Borrowed Words: Translation and Ilan Stavans’s Contribution to the English Language Christopher Schafenacker On Words Reclaimed and the Fate of Ladino Devin E. Naar Introductions: Ilan Stavans and the “Jewish Latin America” Series Stephen A. Sadow Ilan Stavans’s Anthologization of the Latino community in the United States Thomas Nulley-Valdés A Game of Mirrors: The Conversations of Ilan Stavans Derek Xavier García Ilan Stavans and the Mojarra Condition Luis Loya García Mexican Bandit or the Last Intellectual?: Ilan Stavans’s Notorious Raid on the Chicano Literary Canon Carlos Flores Poetry and Music: Interview with Ilan Stavans Ian Campbell SPACES OF THE BODY Isaac Goldemberg Crossing Borders: Ilan Stavans’s Adventures on Stage with Double Edge Theatre Stacy Klein and Matthew Glassman Broken Streets of My City Ruth Behar Epilogue: Seven Lies About Ilan Stavans Jeremy Dauber Notes on Contributors

About the Author :
Bridget Kevane is a professor of Latin American & Latinx Studies. She has written four books on Latinx literature in America and is an author for general readership magazines such as Tablet, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Forward and others.