From the mean streets of Havana to Miami: José Latour's Outcast

Author: Oakley, Helen

Source: Comparative American Studies, Volume 5, Number 1, March 2007 , pp. 97-109(13)

Buy & download fulltext article:

Price: $39.00 plus tax (Refund Policy)

Abstract:

This article focuses on how the Cuban writer José Latour's novel Outcast draws on both Cuban and US literary traditions in order to illuminate US–Cuban relations in the mid-1990s. The article examines how Latour's work may be seen as a response to the socialist genre of crime fiction promoted by the Castro regime in the 1970s and 1980s, which was anti-US and anti-capitalist in its orientation. By contrast, Latour uses the crime fiction genre as a way of voicing social criticism of the Cuban regime and also of highlighting problems faced by new immigrants struggling to survive in Miami. Latour both invokes and challenges stereotypes derived from the Cuban and US hard-boiled variants of the genre in order to explore constructions of race and masculinity which might be described as 'postnational'.

Keywords: POSTNATIONAL; MIGRATION; CRIME FICTION; CUBA; MASCULINITY

Document Type: Research Article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/147757007X204132

Publication date: 2007-03-01

More about this publication?