An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States

Photo: Herman Schultheis, Herman J. Schultheis Collection, Los Angeles Public Library

This book talk will offer the findings and major arguments of Rosina Lozano’s recently published book.

Form the back cover: An American Language reveals the origins of Spanish as a language binding residents of the Southwest to the politics and culture of an expanding nation in the 1840s. As the West increasingly integrated into the United States over the following century, struggles over power, identity, and citizenship transformed the place of Spanish in the nation. An American Language is a history that reimagines what it means to be an American—with profound implications for our own time.