Reference Reviews

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Spanglish, edited by Ilan Stavans. 156 pp. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-313-34804-4. $55.00.

This volume from the Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilizations series explores the complex issues that surround the hybrid language of Spanglish, targeting students, specialists and the lay reader in its attempt to generate debate and prompt further research about the role of Spanglish in modern culture. The work’s eleven essays are grouped in three categories: Considerations, The Media and Testimonios. The first essay, nearly forty pages long, studies the sociolinguistic aspects of Spanglish, presenting an inventory of code-switching and its accompanying linguistic constraints. The second essay remarks on the “daunting task of assigning a grammatical category to every code switch,” and identifies Spanglish speakers as “adept bilingual jugglers.” Other essays in this lengthy section, which comprises nearly three-quarters of the entire work, discuss the possibility of reconfiguring Latino/American studies by incorporating Latino literature into a broad range of courses as a way to promote interdisciplinary communications, as well as a concise chronology of the politics of Spanglish in the U.S. The section closes with an analysis of Tato Laviera’s Spanglish poetics; the author states that for Laviera, the Nuyorican poet, “language takes on an important and political role,” going on to suggest that the seven different linguistic registries present in Laviera’s collections illustrate the poet’s attempts to reflect the dynamic relationship between the cultures of Puerto Rico and New York and Laviera’s challenge to Nuyoricans to resist the acculturating forces of Anglo society. The handful of opinion pieces in the second section offer a snapshot of interpreters as “jousting with languages in the courtroom,” alongside two pieces that approach from opposing viewpoints the question of Spanglish as a full-fledge language. The author of one essay calls Spanglish “a Babel of hybrid tongues,” while another writer insists we should “welcome the wonders of Spanglish to the struggle and debate.” The final section features some representative artistic samples of Spanglish, including a dramatic monologue by the volume’s editor about a Puerto Rican baseball fan who worships the Boston Red Sox yet targets their star shortstop, “Nomah.” A selected bibliography and an index round out the volume. Recommended for college and public libraries.