Expands the range of texts usually examined in the study of nation building

In Pirate Novels Nina Gerassi-Navarro examines an overlooked genre to reveal how history and fiction blend to address important isuses of nation building in nineteenth-century Spanish America. In the figure of the pirate, bold and heroic to some, cruel and criminal to others, she reveals an almost ideal character that came to embody the spirit of emerging nationhood and the violence associated with the struggle to attain it.
Beginning with an overview of the history of piracy, Gerassi-Navarro traces the historical icon of the pirate through colonial-era chronicles before exploring a group of nineteenth-century Mexican, Colombian, and Argentine novels. She argues that the authors of these novels, in their reconstructions of the past, were less interested in accurate representations than in using their narratives to discuss the future of their own countries. In reading these pirate narratives as metaphors for the process of nation building in Spanish America, Gerassi-Navarro exposes the conflicting strains of a complex culture attempting to shape that future. She shows how these pirate stories reflect the on-going debates that marked the consolidation of nationhood, as well as the extent to which the narratives of national identity in Spanish America are structured in relation to European cultures, and the ways in which questions of race and gender were addressed.
Providing new readings of the cultural and political paradigms that marked the literary production of nineteenth-century Spanish America, Pirate Novels uniquely expands the range of texts usually examined in the study of nation-building. It will interest literary scholars generally as well as those engaged in Latin American, colonial, and postcolonial studies.

"“Pirate Novels is a well-written and well-documented approach to a corpus of historical fictions which have not previously been the focus of sustained critical attention. Nina Gerassi-Navarro’s contribution to studies of the nineteenth-century historical novel will undoubtedly be of tremendous use to scholars in this field.”" - Colonial Latin American Historical Review

"“Pirate Novels undoubtedly opens up a new field of research, sheds light onto a problem, and onto a parcel of the Spanish American literary corpus quite left in the dark. This book will turn out to be a seminal text from which a distinctive body of scholarship may grow.”" - Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

"“Gerassi-Navarro has uncovered some overlooked or unappreciated nineteenth-century melodramatic historical novels focusing on pirates. And she’s provided an imaginative and intriguing interpretation suggesting that these too should be given serious consideration as influential tools deliberately intended by their authors to help build cultural and political nationalism in their respective states. . . . Persuasive. . . .”" - Hispanic American Historical Review

"In the wake of a recent proliferation of books about pirates swarming the literary marketplace comes a refreshingly new approach to the subject. . . . Pirate Novels is both scholarly and engaging, with extensive documentation and a useful bibliography. The affordable paperback edition could serve as a topical college text in literature, history, or political science." - Colonial Latin American Review