Preface: íviva el kitsch! -- Immigration and authenticity -- Mother of exiles -- A dream act deferred -- Arrival: notes from an interloper -- Unmasking Marcos -- Íloterøa! or, the ritual of chance -- Santa Selena -- The novelist and the dictator -- The riddle of Cantinflas -- Mario Vargas Llosa: civilization versus barbarism -- The art of the ephemeral -- Sandra Cisneros: form over content -- Civility and Latinos -- José Guadalupe Posada: a profile -- Conversations: Language and empire (with Verónica Albin); Against biography (with Donald Yates); Redrawing the historieta (with Neal Sokol).