Raúl Coronado, Associate Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley
What distinguishes literature from other forms of writing? For example, Latina/o literary historians have uncovered only a handful of novels written by U.S. Latinas/os in the nineteenth century. In 1850s San Antonio, Texas, Florencia Leal, a teenager attending the first girls’ school, kept a beautiful journal where she transcribed letters to friends, wrote poems, copied
lessons from school, and included sketches. My talk will address these questions by paying close attention to her journal, the earliest document written by a Texas-Mexican woman that I have been able to find in the course of fifteen years of archival research.
Sponsorship courtesy of the Office of the Secretary’s Trumbull Lectureship; English; Ethnicity, Race, and
Migration; American Studies; and Public Humanities.
