Intercolonial Intimacies

Reviews / Votes

It is a real pleasure to read the careful analysis and brilliant close reading of some of the sources that Paula Park has chosen for her book, especially the poetry. Park's book is a must read for scholars of the Philippines, Latin American studies and colonial and postcolonial studies. * Latin American Literary Review * Park's fascinating book makes a major contribution to the emerging field of transpacific studies by adding the often-neglected Pacific Latin American region in its anti-imperialist dialogue with the Philippines. Avoiding romanticization, she offers a genealogy of how, from 1898 to 1964, both Filipino and Latin American intellectuals addressed, through appropriated discourses of latinidad and hispanidad, transpacific links among former Spanish colonies in order to collectively resist US imperialism. -- Ignacio Lopez-Calvo, University of California, Merced No other scholarly work situates the contending discourses of Spanish American modernismo, Hispanismo, and the (Anglo) Sajonismo of US colonial policies of 'benevolent assimilation' in Philippine literature and politics as comprehensively and eruditely as Park's Intercolonial Intimacies. Drawing on colonial history and literature, Latin American cultural theory, (US) empire studies, and the multiple legacies of world-systems theory, Park reawakens the forgotten ties between writers and intellectuals speaking across oceans and prepares us to grasp at once the Latin(x) contribution to transpacific studies and the Philippine contribution to Hispanophone literature. -- John D. Blanco, University of California, San Diego