In this article the author explores the influence of contemporary Spanish-American literature in translation on the U.S. literary polysystem. She examines the ways in which the stronger host system refracts or constructs its image of Spanish America, and shows how this corpus of translated literature and its U.S. refractions impinge on U.S. Latino literature. Spanish-American works in translation interact among themselves in a separate literary system, but also interact with(in) the U.S. literary polysystem of a large body of Latino writers, who are related to and/or interact with Spanish-American culture, which makes the interface of the two polysystems problematic and complex. The author's approach emphasizes the importance of the Spanish-American component of U.S. Latino literature and frames her analysis against the backdrop of Itamar Even-Zohar's theory of polysystems.