Cristina Alsina (Centre Dona i Literatura) and Cynthia Stretch (Southern Connecticut State University) have just published the book Innocence and Loss: Representations of War and National Identity in the United States (Cambridge Scholars, 2014). This probing collection of essays explores ways in which “the compulsive redeployment of innocence” in the launching, cheering, and retelling of America’s wars “endlessly defers a national reckoning,” as the editors astutely state in their introduction. The works in this volume question the dominant state discourse on war and explore the origins of this narrative, as well as its long evolution, through the analysis of works of fiction. Innocence and Loss includes, besides an introduction by the editors, essays by Constante González Groba (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela), Stipe Grgas, Laura López Peña (Centre Dona i Literatura), Carme Manuel (Universitat de València), Cary Nelson, Cindy Sheehan, William V. Spanos, and David Zeiger, among others.
