By Invoking Shakespeare

Shakespeare and Latinx young adult literature seem an odd pairing. Yet, if we move beyond an easy separation between Shakespeare and Latinx, what is revealed is a better understanding of the ways Shakespeare informs Latinx artistic and cultural production and how Latinx young adult literature informs Shakespeare. This introductory chapter begins a conversation on this entanglement, highlighting how Latinx writers and creatives of young adult literature artfully appropriate Shakespeare to address social justice issues, such as racism, misogyny, queer-phobias, and issues of belonging. By drawing on what I term literary mestizadas, I offer both an examination of the aesthetics and processes by which Latinx cultures take and remake canonical texts that seemingly are not theirs as well as an analysis of the third elements that are the products of such hybridizations and recombinations.