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Characterized as "the silent minority," the Portuguese have had a varied and checkered presence in American literature.
Representations of the Portuguese in American Literature materially enhances our understanding of a field that until now only a handful of readers had noticed. Ranging from considerations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century canonical writers such as Hawthorne, Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London, and Edith Wharton, to present-day Portuguese-Americans such as Julian Silva, Frank X. Gaspar, Katherine Vaz, and Charles Reis Felix, Reinaldo Silva applies recent theories of ethnicity and race to examine cultural and historical realities as well as authorial intentions, both conscious and unconscious. In so doing, he provides students of Portuguese-American culture and history valuable guidance toward a more comprehensive understanding of the place the Portuguese have occupied in American literature.
About the author
Born in Portugal in 1961, REINALDO SILVA immigrated to America in 1967 at age 6, settling in Newark, New Jersey. He was educated in both the United States and Portugal and holds dual citizenship. After completing undergraduate studies at the University of Coimbra in 1985, he earned an M.A. in English and American literature at Rutgers University-Newark in 1982 and a Ph.D. from New York University in 1998. He has lectured at Rutgers, NYU, NJIT and Seton Hall, and is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Aveiro in Portugal. His teaching and research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and contemporary ethnic literatures, with a special focus on Portuguese-American writers. He has published numerous articles and encyclopedia entries in American journals.
