ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book introduces “students” of all ages to the complexities of Inter-American Studies. It describes the Americas as interconnected geographical spaces, cultures, and peoples since, as is too often the case, subjects throughout the Americas use the term “American” to refer only to the United States (US). The book discusses a different way of understanding the Americas within a global perspective, beyond a US-centric vision of influence and power that perceives an orientalized Latin America, exoticized Caribbean, and passive Canada solely as the weaker, dependent, derivative, and colonized parts of the Americas. To investigate to what degree and in which ways “America/America” as geopolitical, cultural and social manifestation should be seen as “entangled Americas,” beyond closed national and area spaces, is one notion that operates in many of the entries discussing literary and musical phenomena in the Americas.
