In Unhomely Rooms, Roberto Ignacio Diaz explores the practice of writing in English and French by Spanish American authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Traditionally, writers such as the Contesse Merlin (a Cuban-French author) and W.H. Hudson (The Anglo-American best known for his ornithological works) have been excluded from the established discussion of Spanish-American literature because they wrote in a language other than Spanish. Seeking to revise the notion that "heterolingualism" should lead to literary-historical elision, Diaz underscores the ties that bind the works of these authors to the Spanish American literary canon.