Writing Dangerously in Immigrant America
Posted in Symposia
The 2011 Lannan Literary Symposium welcomed a diverse group of influential and engaged writers, journalists, activists and artists, all of whom have engaged in projects committed to exploring, critiquing, remembering, re-imagining and changing the legacies of state-sponsored violence in the Americas; especially in relation to increasingly mobile and displaced communities that, whether migrant, immigrant, exiled, or diasporic, continue to be both vulnerable to, and resilient against the demands and the effects of such violence. The themes across the symposium’s sessions will focus primarily on the vexed relationships between the U.S., its emerging immigrant-diasporic communities, and the specific American regions they mostly represent: the Caribbean, Central America, and the U.S./Mexico borderlands.
Participants
Quique Avilés
Charles Bowden
Edwidge Danticat
Junot Díaz
Cristina García
Juan Felipe Herrera
Ana Patricia Rodriguez
Héctor Tobar
Schedule of Events
Tuesday, April 5
Reading and Discussion with Junot Díaz
8:00 PM – 8:45 PM | Gaston Hall
Doors open at 7:30 PM. Reception and book-signing to follow in Copley Formal Lounge.
Wednesday, April 6
Breakfast
9:30 AM | Copley Formal Lounge
Writing Beyond Catastrophe: Haiti, the Earthquake and the Diaspora
10:00 AM – 11:45 AM | Copley Formal Lounge
Memoirist and novelist Edwidge Danticat discusses Haiti, the January 2010 earthquake and Haitian diaspora communities in the U.S.
Cold War/Drug War/Border War/Turf War: Salvador to Juárez to LA to DC, Session I
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM | Copley Formal Lounge
Héctor Tobar and Charles Bowden discuss the ongoing aftermath of U.S. Cold War and Drug War policies in Central America and Mexico.
Coffee Break
2:30 PM – 3:00 PM | Copley Formal Lounge
Cold War/Drug War/Border War/Turf War: Salvador to Juárez to LA to DC, Session II
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM | Copley Formal Lounge
Quique Avilés will perform his one-man show Los Treinta (The Thirty). Ana Patricia Rodriguez, Associate Professor of U.S. Latino/a Literature in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Maryland, moderates.
Readings by Juan Felipe Herrera and Cristina García
8:00 PM – 9:30 PM | Gonda Theatre, Davis Performing Arts Center
Doors open at 7:30 PM. Reception to follow in Davis Center Lobby.