The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems, and Loqueras for the End of the Century

9780872863132

Home | Books | The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems, and Loqueras for the End of the Century

Guillermo Gomez-Pena

Genre Fiction Books & Literature

Format Hardcover

Dimensions 6.00 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 0.60 (d)

Pages 244

Publisher City Lights Books

Publication Date January 2001

ISBN 9780872863132

Book ISBN 10 0872863131

About Book

Poetry. Latin American Studies. THE NEW WORLD BORDER is a new collection of essays, poems, and performance text through which Gomez-Pena muses on matters of race, nationality, language, and identity. The book is a carnivalesque inversion of ethnic and geo-political ideology, a disorienting free-fall into the space between cultures, and a head-on collision with real and imagined borders. Gomez-Pena won international acclaim for his efforts to create a hybrid culture and articulate a borderless ethos, and has been called an intercultural interpreter, reverse anthropologist, experimental linguist, and political artist of the first order. The Village Voice proclaims "In everything he does, he remains an indomitably playful phrasemaker; a fertile rethinker of contradictions, clichés, and conundrums; and an inspiring recruiter for a playground army of cultural pluralists".

Reviews

Library Journal

Performance artist and self-proclaimed "reverse anthropologist," Gomez-Pea slashes and burns his way through the social jungle like a Latino Berzerker. Clear and energetic, he levels all, and I mean all, cultural dragons. He is not the first to observe that change in the late 20th century has been so enormous that the entire world, especially the United States, has plunged into a deep identity crisis, but unlike some social critics, he offers hope. First, he argues, we must recognize that no one is innocent. Then, only by accepting the inevitability of our innate hybridization will we find a healthy context for genuine growth. Taken from several projects, the author's poems and texts are astute, biting, and often painfully funny. Like any good trickster, he tries to awaken us by teaching how important it is to laugh at ourselves. Read at risk to your own complacency.Susan Olcott, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., Ohio

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