"Before it becomes a political, social, or even linguistic issue,
bilingualism is a private affair, intimate theater." So writes Gustavo
Pérez Firmat in this ground-breaking study of the interweaving of life
and languages in a group of bilingual Spanish, Spanish-American and
Latino writers. Unravelling the "tongue ties" of such diverse figures as
the American philosopher George Santayana, the emigré Spanish poet Pedro
Salinas, Spanish American novelists Guillermo Cabrera Infante and María
Luisa Bombal, and Latino memoirists Richard Rodriguez and Sandra
Cisneros, Pérez Firmat argues that their careers are shaped by a
linguistic family romance that involves negotiating between the
competing claims and attractions of Spanish and English.