Books by Ilan Stavans

2020 Foreword INDIES Gold Winner for Multicultural Fiction2020 Mass Book Awards Must Read FictionAn inspired and urgent prose retelling of the Maya myth of creation by acclaimed Latin American author and scholar Ilan Stavans, gorgeously illustrated by Salvadoran folk artist Gabriela Larios and introduced by renowned author, diplomat, and environmental activist Homero Aridjis.

With the release of the census figures in 2000, Latino America wasanointed the future driving force of American culture. The emergence of Spanglish as a form of communication is one of the more influential markers of an America gone Latino. Spanish, present on this continent since the fifteenth century, when Iberian explorers sought to colonize territories in what are now Florida, New Mexico, Texas, and California, has become ubiquitous in the last few decades. The nation's unofficial second language, it is highly visible on several 24-hour TV networks and on more than 200 radio stations across the country.But Spanish north of the Rio Grande has not spread in its pure Iberian form. On the contrary, a signature of the brewing "Latin Fever" that has swept the United States since the mid-1980s is the astonishing creative linguistic amalgam of tongues used by people of Hispanic descent, not only in major cities but in rural areas as well -- neither Spanish nor English, but a hybrid, known only as Spanglish.

In The Hispanic Condition, Ilan Stavans offers a subtle and insightful meditation on Hispanic society in the United States. A native of Mexico, Stavans has emerged as one of the most distinguished Latin American writers of our time, an award-winning novelist and critic praised by scholars and beloved by readers. In this pioneering psycho-historical profile, he delves into the cultural differences and similarities among the five major Hispanic groups: Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Central and South Americans, and Spaniards.Masterfully interweaving historical, literary, and political references with his personal experience, Stavans discusses the divisions within a common heritage; customs of music, love, sex, marriage, and religious belief; the role of the intellectual in society; ideological struggle; and the hopeful visions of the future at the core of a civilization rooted in the trauma of the past.

Offers a poetic exploration - across time, space, and language, real as well as metaphorical - of the US-Mexican wall dividing the two civilizations, of similar walls (Jerusalem, China, Berlin, Warsaw) in history, and of the act of separating people by ideology, class, race, and other subterfuges.

This long-awaited biography provides a fascinating and comprehensive picture of Garcia Marquez's life up to the publication of his classic 100 Years of Solitude.

Ilan Stavans and Joshua Ellison's Reclaiming Travel is a provocative meditation on the meaning of travel in the twenty-first century. Eschewing tourism, Stavans and Ellison urge for a rethinking of contemporary travel in order to return it to its roots as a tool for self-discovery and transformation.

Noted cultural critic Ilan Stavans and artist ADAL analyze the selfie and its role in contemporary life by exploring it in the context of the history of Western self-portraiture, mythology, literature, art, and philosophy.

A book-length conversation between two leading scholars on the themes and questions of Hispanic popular culture

Shares interests in the intersection of art and ideas. This book takes thirteen pieces of Latino art, each reproduced in color, as occasions for thematic discussions.

Stavans interweaves his own experience with that of other Jewish writers and thinkers to explore modern Jewish culture across the boundaries of language and nation

Our understanding of love is not the same as the one espoused by Plato in the fourth century BCE. Nor is it the same as the courtly love of the Renaissance, or love as defined by Stendhal or Proust or Freud. Here, cultural critic Ilan Stavans engages in a dialogue with Veronica Albin about love and its various manifestations.

Ilan Stavans has been described by the ""Washington Post"" as 'Latin America's liveliest and boldest critic and most innovative cultural enthusiast'. This collection of essays focuses on his Jewish heritage and Hispanic upbringing and the relationship between the two cultures from both his own personal experience and that of others.

In a series of lively, provocative conversations, two prominent intellectuals debate the nature of "Hispanic-ness" as it has been expressed in Hispanic civilization around the world and across the centuries.

Is there such a thing as a modern Jewish literary tradition, one navigating across linguistic and national lines? If so, how should one define it? This volume explores the problems and prospects of representing Jewish experiences through such media as Holocaust memoirs and Jewish museums.

Collects the challenging and stimulating writing of Ilan Stavans into one essential volume, examining the voice of the Spanish-speaking cultures in the US.