Cotton Mather's Spanish Lessons

A Story of Language, Race, and Belonging in the Early Americas

Cotton Mather's Spanish Lessons
Kirsten Silva Gruesz
RRP:
NZ$ 68.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 58.64
Hardback
h235 x 156mm - 336pg
26 Aug 2022 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9780674971752
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
A sweeping history of linguistic and colonial encounter in the early Americas, anchored by the unlikely story of how Boston' s most famous Puritan came to write the first Spanish-language publication in the English New World. The Boston minister Cotton Mather was the first English colonial to refer to himself as an American. He was also the first to author a Spanish-language publication: La Fe del Christiano (The Faith of the Christian), a Protestant tract intended to evangelize readers across the Spanish Americas. Kirsten Silva Gruesz explores the conditions that produced La Fe del Christiano, from the intimate story of the "Spanish Indian" servants in Mather' s household, to the fragile business of printing and bookselling, to the fraught overlaps of race, ethnicity, and language that remain foundational to ideas of Latina/o/x belonging in the United States today. Mather' s Spanish project exemplifies New England' s entanglement within a partially Spanish Catholic, largely indigenous New World. British Americans viewed Spanish not only as a set of linguistic practices, but also as the hallmark of a rival empire and a nascent racial-ethnic category. Guided by Mather' s tract, Gruesz explores English settlers' turbulent contacts with the people they called "Spanish Indians," as well as with Black and local native peoples. Tracing colonial encounters from Boston to Mexico, Florida, and the Caribbean, she argues that language learning was intimately tied with the formation of new peoples. Even as Spanish has become the de facto second language of the United States, the story of La Fe del Christiano remains timely and illuminating, locating the roots of latinidad in the colonial system of the early Americas. Cotton Mather' s Spanish Lessons reinvents our understanding of a key colonial intellectual, revealing notions about language and the construction of race that endure to this day.
One of the most exciting and illuminating books I have read this century. Just when our nation' s institutions of historical memory are being called to account for their role in constructing entrenched systems of racialization, Gruesz reminds us that the political status of Latinx people in the United States remains profoundly unclear. Brilliantly combining historical, archival, and literary work, this book shows her to be a singular figure in American Studies today. -- Ramon Saldivar, author of The Borderlands of Culture A stunningly researched and original take on Cotton Mather. Kirsten Silva Gruesz replaces entrenched US origins stories with a transformative account of labor, race, and nation. In so doing, she locates English-speaking America in a series of richly hemispheric new contexts. -- Sarah Rivett, author of Unscripted America Kirsten Silva Gruesz has produced a magisterial study that fundamentally reimagines the complex relationship between colonial British North America and colonial Spanish America. Coupling extensive archival research with sensitive readings of multilingual texts, she traces not only the dialogue among criollo elites throughout the Americas, but also the deep imprints of Indigenous and African peoples on linguistic, religious, and material practices that continue to bear on our own lives today. -- John Moran Gonzalez, author of Border Renaissance A brilliant, essential, and moving book. In Cotton Mather' s Spanish Lessons, Kirsten Silva Gruesz offers her own enduring lessons on language, translation, and latinidad for a new generation of Americanists. -- Anna Brickhouse, author of The Unsettlement of America This dazzling book does so much at once. By humanizing the oft-maligned Cotton Mather, it restores the complexity of an important thinker, wrestling with global events at a pivotal moment for America' s identity and his own. In so doing, it also situates New England in a much wider Atlantic world filled with people speaking Spanish and many other languages. Cotton Mather' s Spanish Lessons deepens our history in every imaginable way. -- Ted Widmer, author of Lincoln on the Verge Immersive and eye-opening. . . Meticulously researched and elegantly written, this is an essential reconsideration of the historical and contemporary place of the Spanish language and ' Brown identity' in the U. S. * Publishers Weekly *
Kirsten Silva Gruesz is a leading expert on Spanish-language print culture in the United States and the author of Ambassadors of Culture: The Transamerican Origins of Latino Writing. She is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780674971752
Published: 26 Aug 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: The Belknap Press
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Format: Hardback
Height: 235mm
Width: 156mm
Pages: 336

In stock - for items in stock we aim to dispatch the next business day. For delivery in NZ allow 2-5 business days, with rural taking a wee bit longer.

Locally sourced in NZ - stock comes from a NZ supplier with an approximate delivery of 7-15 business days.

International Imports - stock is imported into NZ, depending on air or sea shipping option from the international supplier stock can take 10-30 working days to arrive into NZ. 

Pre-order Titles - delivery will vary depending on where the title is published, if local stock is available in NZ then 5-7 business days, for international imports it can be 10-30 business days. In all cases we will access the quickest supply option.

Delivery Packaging - we ship all items in cardboard sleeves or by box with either packing paper or corn starch chips. (We avoid using plastics bubble bags)

Tracking - Orders are delivered by track and trace courier and are fully insured, tracking information will be sent by email once dispatched.

View our full Order & Delivery information