Writing in Spanish Elevates Academia

n estimated fifty-threemillion Spanish speakers live in the United States. This is the largest Spanish-speaking population outside of Mexico and makes Spanish the second-most-spoken language in the United States. Reflecting this growing demographic, several creative writing programs that are taught in Spanish or taught bilingually have launched over the past few years. By bringing another language into an academic system that privileges English, programs such as those at the University of Houston, the University of Iowa, and the University of Texas in El Paso provide alternative and radical frameworks that challenge a historically white academy’s assumptions about writing—how it should be taught, who belongs in the U.S. graduate