The Beats in Mexico by David Stephen Calonne (A Book Review)
Abstract
The Beats in Mexico (2022) by David Stephen Calonne is reviewed here in terms of its contribution to the larger body of academic studies that explore the representation of Mexico in US literature. Calonne's study distinguishes itself by emphasizing the importance of overlooked female writers among the Beat generation, including Bonnie Bremser, Joanne Kyger, and Margaret Randall, who appear alongside more familiar names such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. In doing so, Calonne expands the discussion of the Beats in important ways and, furthermore, offers a welcome contribution that enriches the conversation around the understanding (and misunderstanding) of Mexico by US writers and intellectuals. Given the continued tensions between the two countries, it should be of great topical interest as well.
Keywords
Beat Generation; Mexico in Literature; book review; David Steven Calonne
References
Calonne, David Stephen. The Beats in Mexico. Rutgers UP, 2022.
- - -. The Spiritual Imagination of the Beats. Cambridge UP, 2017
Delpar, Helen. The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations between the United States and Mexico, 1920-1935. U of Alabama P, 1992.
Gunn, Drewey Wayne. American and British Writers in Mexico, 1556-1973. U of Texas P, 1974.
Noakes, Susan. “The Rhetoric of Travel: The French Romantic Myth of Naples.” Ethnohistory 33.2 (1986): 139-148. https://doi.org/10.2307/481770
Porter, Katherine Anne. Outline of Mexican Arts and Crafts. Young & McCallister, 1922.
Robinson, Cecil. Mexico and the Hispanic Southwest in American Literature. U of Arizona P, 1977.
Sheldon, Glenn. South of Our Selves: Mexico in the Poems of Williams, Kerouac, Corso, Ginsberg, Levertov and Hayden. McFarland, 2004.
Texas A&M International University United States
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1431-8629
Nathaniel R. Racine is an assistant professor of English in the Department of Humanities at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas. He holds a PhD in English from Temple University in Philadelphia and a professionally-accredited Master’s degree in Urban Planning from McGill University in Montréal, Canada. In 2018-2019 he was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar to Mexico. His recent work draws from the fields of geography and urbanism to understand the cultural exchange between the US and Mexico from the interwar period through midcentury.
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