Description
Book SynopsisIn 1699, Cotton Mather authored the first Spanish-language text in the English New World: a religious tract aimed at evangelizing readers across the Spanish Americas. Kirsten Silva Gruesz uses Mather's text to explore complex overlaps of race, ethnicity, and language in the early Americas, which continue to govern Latina/o/x belonging today.
Trade ReviewIn her revolutionary new book,…Gruesz sets aside Mather the witch hunter to center him instead in a fascinating new story about race…It is Gruesz’s thrillingly literary focus on a single text—spinning out as much significance as she has convincingly shown it deserves—that makes her new consideration of him so rewarding. -- Joseph Rezek * Los Angeles Review of Books *
A fascinating expedition into matters of race, language, and religion…That Gruesz can so convincingly link the miniscule actions of a late seventeenth-century printer in Boston with the huge contemporary issue of ethno-racial ambiguity in the US indicates the range and ambition of her book, fully achieved. -- Peter Hulme * American Literary History *
As [Gruesz] revisits the life and writings of Mather especially as connected to his
La Fe del Christiano, she illustrates that his significance went well beyond the basic religious world of New England, entangling him in the broader, imperial context of the early modern world. -- Richard Bailey * H-Net Reviews *
A new narrative about race and ideas, as well as practices, of belonging, with deep and explicit implications for Latina/o/x history today…Gruesz’s ambitious and innovative book—both a macro history of language, ideas, and circulation and a micro history of Mather, his household, and his interactions with Native and Black people—should be widely read. -- Alejandra Dubcovsky * New England Quarterly *
Extraordinary…In many ways [Gruesz] expands what the biography of a text can achieve and shows how many aims it can encompass…Every early Americanist, from any discipline, should certainly read the introduction. Most should read the book in full. All will find insightful material to spur further studies. [This book] contains important lessons for us all. -- Abram Van Engen * William & Mary Quarterly *
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 *
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. -- Ramón Saldívar, author of
The Borderlands of CultureA 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 AmericaKirsten 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 Morán González, author of
Border RenaissanceA 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 AmericaThis 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
