Luso-American Literature

Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants have had a significant presence in North America since the nineteenth century. Recently, Brazilians have also established vibrant communities in the U.S. This anthology brings together, for the first time in English, the writings of these diverse Portuguese-speaking, or “Luso-American” voices. Historically linked by language, colonial experience, and cultural influence, yet ethnically distinct, Luso-Americans have often been labeled an “invisible minority.” This collection seeks to address this lacuna, with a broad mosaic of prose, poetry, essays, memoir, and other writings by more than fifty prominent literary figures–immigrants and their descendants, as well as exiles and sojourners. It is an unprecedented gathering of published, unpublished, forgotten, and translated writings by a transnational community that both defies the stereotypes of ethnic literature, and embodies the drama of the immigrant experience.

Robert Henry Moser is an associate professor of Luso-Brazilian Studies at the University of Georgia. He is the author of The Carnivalesque Defunto: Death and the Dead in Modern Brazilian Literature. Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta is an assistant professor of Brazilian literature and culture at the University of Illinois. He has published widely on Brazilian and Brazilian-American literature in the U.S. and Brazil.