A Cultural History of Underdevelopment explores the
changing place of Latin America in U.S. culture from the mid-nineteenth century to the recent
U.S.-Cuba détente. In doing so, it uncovers the complex ways in which Americans have
imagined the global geography of poverty and progress, as the hemispheric imperialism of the
nineteenth century yielded to the Cold War discourse of "underdevelopment." John
Patrick Leary examines representations of uneven development in Latin America across a variety
of genres and media, from canonical fiction and poetry to cinema, photography, journalism,
popular song, travel narratives, and development theory.
For the United States, Latin America has figured variously
as good neighbor and insurgent threat, as its possible future and a remnant of its past. By
illuminating the conventional ways in which Americans have imagined their place in the
hemisphere, the author shows how the popular image of the United States as a modern, exceptional
nation has been produced by a century of encounters that travelers, writers, radicals,
filmmakers, and others have had with Latin America. Drawing on authors such as James Weldon
Johnson, Willa Cather, and Ernest Hemingway, Leary argues that Latin America has figured in U.S.
culture not just as an exotic "other" but as the familiar reflection of the United
States' own regional, racial, class, and political inequalities.
Copyright:
2016
Book Details
Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780813939179
Publisher:
University of Virginia Press
Date of Addition:
11/10/16
Copyrighted By:
the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia