Tia Chucha Press is proud to reprint by popular demand this anthology of work by Central American writers living in the United States. The Wandering Song captures the complexity of a rapidly growing community that shares certain experiences with other Latinx groups, but also offers its own unique narrative. This is the first-ever comprehensive literary survey of the Central American diaspora by a US publisher—perfect for high school, college, or university courses in US literature, Latinx literature, multicultural studies, and migration studies.
A multi-genre collection featuring poems, short stories, essays, memoir or novel excerpts, and creative nonfiction, the anthology showcases writers who render a multiplicity of experiences: of refugees from the wars of the 1980s, of those who barely remember the homeland, and of those who were born in el norte. There are writers from both coasts and from the middle. Their aesthetics range from hip-hop inflected to high literary to acrobatics in Spanglish. It is a community that shares not only a history of violence—both here and back home—but the hope and healing that ensures its survival. The writers include migrants or children of migrants from countries in the so-called Northern Triangle—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—considered one of the most violent places on earth, as well as from Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panamá.