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Barrio-logos : Space and Place in Urban Chicano Literature and Culture Struggles over space and resistance to geographic displacement gave rise to much of Chicano history and culture. In this book, the author explores how California Chicano writers, journalists, artists, activists and musicians have used expressive culture to oppose the community-destroying forces of urban renewal programmes and the massive freeway development, and to create and defend a sense of Chicano place identity. Villa opens with a historical overview of the Chicano communities and culture showing how these have developed in response to conflicts over space since the US annexation of Mexican territory in the 1840's. The author examines contemporary members of the Chicano intelligentsia.
Breaking Boundaries : Latina Writing and Critical Readings
Bridges, Borders, and Breaks : History, Narrative, and Nation in Twenty-First-Century Chicana/o Literary Criticism This volume reassesses the field of Chicana/o literary studies in light of the rise of Latina/o studies, the recovery of a large body of early literature by Mexican Americans, and the "transnational turn" in American studies. The chapters reveal how "Chicano" defines a literary critical sensibility as well as a political one and show how this view can yield new insights about the status of Mexican Americans, the legacies of colonialism, and the ongoing prospects for social justice. Chicana/o literary representations emerge as significant examples of the local that interrogate globalization's attempts to erase difference. They also highlight how Chicana/o literary studies' interests in racial justice and the minority experience have produced important intersections with new disciplines while also retaining a distinctive character. The recalibration of Chicana/o literary studies in light of these shifts raises important methodological and disciplinary questions, which these chapters address as they introduce the new tools required for the study of Chicana/o literature at this critical juncture.
Brown on Brown : Chicano/a Representations of Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity Common conceptions permeating U.S. ethnic queer theory tend to confuse aesthetics with real-world acts and politics. Often Chicano/a representations of gay and lesbian experiences in literature and film are analyzed simply as propaganda. The cognitive, emotional, and narrational ingredients (that is, the subject matter and the formal traits) of those representations are frequently reduced to a priori agendas that emphasize a politics of difference. In this book, Frederick Luis Aldama follows an entirely different approach. He investigates the ways in which race and gay/lesbian sexuality intersect and operate in Chicano/a literature and film while taking into full account their imaginative nature and therefore the specific kind of work invested in them. Also, Aldama frames his analyses within today's larger (globalized) context of postcolonial literary and filmic canons that seek to normalize heterosexual identity and experience. Throughout the book, Aldama applies his innovative approach to throw new light on the work of authors Arturo Islas, Richard Rodriguez, John Rechy, Ana Castillo, and Sheila Ortiz Taylor, as well as that of film director Edward James Olmos. In doing so, Aldama aims to integrate and deepen Chicano literary and filmic studies within a comparative perspective. Aldama's unusual juxtapositions of narrative materials and cultural personae, and his premise that literature and film produce fictional examples of a social and historical reality concerned with ethnic and sexual issues largely unresolved, make this book relevant to a wide range of readers.
Chicana Creativity and Criticism This provocative combination of original poetry, prose, criticism, and visual art documents the continuing growth of literature by and about Chicanas. Through innovative use of language and images, the artists represented here explore female sexuality, economic and social injustice, gender roles, and the contributions of critical theory. Chicana Creativity and Criticism, first published in 1988, includes poetry by Lorna Dee Cervantes, Lucha Corpi, Evangelina Vigil-Pi?on, Denise Chávez, and Naomi Qui?onez; prose by Alma E. Cervantes, Helena María Viramontes, Roberta Fernández, and Sheila Ortiz Taylor; criticism by Tey Diana Rebolledo, Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, Norma Alarcon, and María Herrera-Sobek; and art by Carmen Lomas Garza, Yreina Cervántez, and Laura Aguilar.
Chicano Nations : The Hemispheric Origins of Mexican American Literature Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series Chicano Nations argues that the transnationalism that is central to Chicano identity originated in the global, postcolonial moment at the turn of the nineteenth century rather than as an effect of contemporary economic conditions, which began in the mid nineteenth century and primarily affected the laboring classes. The Spanish empire then began to implode, and colonists in the "new world" debated the national contours of the viceroyalties. This is where Marissa K. López locates the origins of Chicano literature, which is now and always has been "postnational," encompassing the wealthy, the poor, the white, and the mestizo. Tracing its long history and the diversity of subject positions it encompasses, Chicano Nations explores the shifting literary forms authors have used to write the nation from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. López argues that while national and global tensions lie at the historical heart of Chicana/o narratives of the nation, there should be alternative ways to imagine the significance of Chicano literature other than as a reflection of national identity. In a nuanced analysis, the book provides a way to think of early writers as a meaningful part of Chicano literary history, and, in looking at the nation, rather than the particularities of identity, as that which connects Chicano literature over time, it engages the emerging hemispheric scholarship on U.S. literature.
The Corn Woman: Stories and Legends of the Hispanic Southwest : Stories and Legends of the Hispanic Southwest The culture, history, and spirit of the Hispanic Southwest are brought to readers through this fascinating collection of 45 cuentos (stories and legends) from the region. From ancient creation myths of the Aztecs and traditional tales of Spanish colonialists to an eclectic sampling of the work of modern Latino storytellers, this book provides a rich tapestry of both obscure and well-loved stories-religious stories; animal tales; stories of magic, transformation, and wisdom; and chistes (short comic tales). Fifteen tales are also presented in Spanish. The origin and historical development of the stories are examined in an introductory chapter. A discussion of dichos (proverbs) and adivinanzas (riddles) illuminates the larger context of the oral tradition in which the tales have flourished. Lavishly illustrated with pictures of original paintings and sculpture by contemporary Latino artists, this fascinating collection will appeal to children and adults alike and is a must for the multicultural class
Critical Insights: The House on Mango Street Easily one of the most critically and commercially successful novels by a Mexican American writer. Since its publication in 1984, more than one million copies have been sold, and it regularly appears on high school and college reading lists. In deceptively simple prose, it tells the stories of a young Mexican American girl's family and friends and of her coming-of-age within an impoverished Chicago neighborhood.
Dancing with Ghosts : A Critical Biography of Arturo Islas This first critical biography of Arturo Islas (19381991) brings to life the complex and overlapping worlds inhabited by the gay Chicano poet, novelist, scholar, and professor. Gracefully written and deeply researched, Dancing with Ghosts considers both the larger questions of Islas's life--his sexuality, racial identification, and political personality--and the events of his everyday existence, from his childhood in the borderlands of El Paso to his adulthood in San Francisco and at Stanford University. Frederick Aldama portrays the many facets of Islas's engaging and often contradictory personality. He also explores Islas's coming into the craft of poetry and fiction--his extraordinary struggle to publish his novels, The Rain God, La Mollie and the King of Tears, and Migrant Souls--as well as his pivotal role in paving the way for a new generation of Chicano/a scholars and writers. Through a skillful interweaving of life history, criticism, and literary theory, Aldama paints an unusually rich and wide-ranging portrait of both the man and the eventful times in which he lived. He describes Islas's struggle with polio as a child, his near-death experience and ileostomy as a thirty-year-old beginning to explore his queer sexuality in San Francisco in the 1970s, and his fatal struggle with AIDS in the late 1980s. Drawing from hundreds of unpublished letters, lecture notes, drafts of essays, novels, and poetry archived at Stanford University, Aldama also deals frankly with the controversies that swirled around Islas's impassioned love life, his drug addictions, and his scholarly and professional career as one of the first Chicano/a professors in the United States. He discusses the importance of Islas's pioneering role in bridging Anglo, Latin American, Chicano/a, and European storytelling styles and voices. Dancing with Ghosts succeeds brilliantly both as an account of a fascinating life that embraced many different worlds and as a chronicle of the grand historical shifts that transformed the late-twentieth-century American cultural landscape.
Daughters of Self-creation : The Contemporary Chicana Novel During a Chicano Civil Rights march, Gloria Damasco, a feisty political activist, finds a murdered child and begins an investigation that will lead her on a trail of international conspiracy and bloody vengeance.
Hispanic Immigrant Literature Immigration has been one of the basic realities of life for Latino communities in the United States since the nineteenth century. It is one of the most important themes in Hispanic literature, and it has given rise to a specific type of literature while also defining what it means to be Hispanic in the United States. Immigrant literature uses predominantly the language of the homeland; it serves a population united by that language, irrespective of national origin; and it solidifies and furthers national identity. The literature of immigration reflects the reasons for emigrating, records--both orally and in writing--the trials and tribulations of immigration, and facilitates adjustment to the new society while maintaining links with the old society. Based on an archive assembled over the past two decades by author Nicol#65533;s Kanellos's Recovering the U. S. Hispanic Literary Heritage project, this comprehensive study is one of the first to define this body of work. Written and recorded by people from Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America, the texts presented here reflect the dualities that have characterized the Hispanic immigrant experience in the United States since the mid-nineteenth century, set always against a longing for homeland.
The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros In her instantaneously acclaimed work, Sandra Cisneros draws on her own experience as a Mexican-American woman writer facing obstacles in a patriarchal community resistant to change. Compared to the works of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, The House on Mango Street is made up of lyrical passages, interconnected vignettes, and meditations and observations that resemble prose poems. Cisneros's structurally and thematically bold work explores the often-violent coming of age of a young Mexican-American woman. This new title in the Modern Critical Interpretations series analyzes the work through full-length critical essays, and features a bibliography, notes on the contributing writers, a chronology of the author's life, an index, and an introductory essay by esteemed critic Harold Bloom.
Inhabiting La Patria : Identity, Agency, and Antojo in the Work of Julia Alvarez Examines the work of prolific Dominican American writer Julia Alvarez.
Life In Search of Readers : Reading (in) Chicano/a Literature Since colonial times, Chicano/a literature has varied with the authors' assumptions about the class and gender of their audiences, the linguistic choices available for literary communication, the geographic mobility of writers and readers, and the tastes they may have acquired in Mexico or other countries. In this examination of Chicano/a literature, Manuel M. Martin-Rodriguez analyses the ways it connects with and is shaped by the interaction with its audiences. Motivated by a Tomas Rivera essay from 1971, into the Labyrinth: The Chicano in Literature, Martin-Rodriguez began collecting, researching, and examining Chicano/a literature. He soon determined that a work of literature without a reader has no real existence and, specifically, Chicano/a literature has been defined as much by its readers as by its authors. movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when the creation of Chicano-owned or controlled publishing enterprises made possible a surge of Chicano/a literature at the national level. He then concentrates on Chicana literature and engendering the reader and on linguistic and marketing strategies for a multicultural readership. Finally, Martin-Rodriguez provides a very thorough list of Chicano/a literature which he studied and he recommends for the reader to consider. About The Author: Manuel M. Martin-Rodriguez is director of Hispanic Studies and Graduate Studies in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at Texas A&M University, College Station, where he is an associate professor.
The Magic Curtain : The Mexican-American Border in Fiction, Film, and Song Borderlands--especially the United States-Mexico borderland--have long served as backgrounds for depicting social instability, according to Thomas Torrans. And borders--or magic curtains--have readily been fashioned into exotic backdrops for films, novels, ballads, and tales in which characters shift easily from one culture to another. The protagonists are equally at home in both societies, or, at worst, at home in neither. True border novels form a literature that deserves a category all its own. There is an uneven quality--a coarseness sometimes mixed with polish, running the gamut of emotion from the tragic to the comic. One recent fictional attempt to exploit the border's historical aspects is Fandango by Ron McCoy (1984), while one of the older efforts is that of the early twentieth-century novelist Will Levington Comfort in Somewhere South in Sonora (1925). Border fiction is often just part of a larger whole and a number of books, whether fiction or nonfiction, seldom if ever cross the magical line between the two cultures. They remain, for the most part, fully centered in either Mexico or the United States, such as J. Frank Dobie's very Texan A Vaquero of the Brush Country or his personalized account of his equestrian travels in northern Mexico, first published as Tongues of the Monte and later as The Mexico I Like. Film epitomizes the escape across the magic curtain. The Getaway (based on the novel by Jim Thompson) is exemplary. Carol and Doc (Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen) not only manage the great escape with a satchel full of stolen money, they do it by fleeing to the border after a long brush with death. Filmmakers have carved movies out of other novels. B. Traven's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Glendon Swarthout's They Came to Cordura are compelling looks at the vast and hard country that the border stitches together. Fortunately, corridos--the voice of the people--are not dead. They exist far afield, from the ballads created around the life and work of California's César Chávez and the United Farm Workers of America movement to the older songs. Numerous ballads celebrate incidents befalling those running afoul of the law--from bandits to smugglers, large landholders, Texas Rangers, and, inevitably, cattle dealers and rustlers. Still others recount the derring-do of such once well-known figures as Juan Cortina (the "Red Robber of the Rio Grande") and Catarino Garza, dreamers of lost causes and proponents of independent border republics. Corridos also faithfully reflect the latest developments--technology and maquiladoras, for example.
Mexican American Literature : The Politics of Identity Presenting an up-to-date critical perspective as well as a cultural, political and historical context, this book is an excellent introduction to Mexican American literature, affording readers the major novels, drama and poetry. This volume presents fresh and original readings of major works, and with its historical graphics and cultural analyses, impressively delivers key information to the reader.
Modernismo Modernity and the Development of Spanish American Literature Winner, A Choice Outstanding Academic Book Modernismo arose in Spanish American literature as a confrontation with and a response to modernizing forces that were transforming Spanish American society in the later nineteenth century. In this book, Cathy L. Jrade undertakes a full exploration of the modernista project and shows how it provided a foundation for trends and movements that have continued to shape literary production in Spanish America throughout the twentieth century. Jrade opens with a systematic consideration of the development of modernismo and then proceeds with detailed analyses of works-poetry, narrative, and essays-that typified and altered the movement's course. In this way, she situates the writing of key authors, such as Rub#65533;n Dar#65533;o, Jos#65533; Mart#65533;, and Leopoldo Lugones, within the overall modernista project and traces modernismo's influence on subsequent generations of writers. Jrade's analysis reclaims the power of the visionary stance taken by these creative intellectuals. She firmly abolishes any lingering tendency to associate modernismo with affectation and effete elegance, revealing instead how the modernistas' new literary language expressed their profound political and epistemological concerns.
Sandra Cisneros's Woman Hollering Creek This addition to Rodopi Press¿s Dialogue Series presents a collection of essays solely dedicated to Woman Hollering Creek (1991), Sandra Cisneros¿s groundbreaking collection of short fiction stories and sketches. The emerging and veteran scholars who have contributed to this text approach Cisneros¿s work from varied perspectives, including negotiation of geographic and sociocultural borders, popular and material culture, and gender portrayals. Author dialogues, in which the scholars comment upon each other¿s research, constitute a unique, innovative feature of this particular volume. This book will be of interest to those engaged in Chicano/a literature and feminist/gender studies, as well as instructors of literary critical analysis.
Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia : Conversations with Writers and Artists Since the 1980s, a prolific "second wave" of Chicano/a writers and artists has tremendously expanded the range of genres and subject matter in Chicano/a literature and art. Building on the pioneering work of their predecessors, whose artistic creations were often tied to political activism and the civil rights struggle, today's Chicano/a writers and artists feel free to focus as much on the aesthetic quality of their work as on its social content. They use novels, short stories, poetry, drama, documentary films, and comic books to shape the raw materials of life into art objects that cause us to participate empathetically in an increasingly complex Chicano/a identity and experience. This book presents far-ranging interviews with twenty-one "second wave" Chicano/a poets, fiction writers, dramatists, documentary filmmakers, and playwrights. Some are mainstream, widely recognized creators, while others work from the margins because of their sexual orientations or their controversial positions. Frederick Luis Aldama draws out the artists and authors on both the aesthetic and the sociopolitical concerns that animate their work. Their conversations delve into such areas as how the artists' or writers' life experiences have molded their work, why they choose to work in certain genres and how they have transformed them, what it means to be Chicano/a in today's pluralistic society, and how Chicano/a identity influences and is influenced by contact with ethnic and racial identities from around the world.
Toward a Latina Feminism of the Americas : Repression and Resistance in Chicana and Mexicana Literature Weaving strands of Chicana and Mexicana subjectivities, Toward a Latina Feminism of the Americas explores political and theoretical agendas, particularly those that undermine the patriarchy, across a diverse range of Latina authors. Within this range, calls for a coalition are clear, but questions surrounding the process of these revolutionary dialogues provide important lines of inquiry. Examining the works of authors such as Sandra Cisneros, Laura Esquivel, Carmen Boullosa, and Helena Mar#65533;a Viramontes, Anna Sandoval considers resistance to traditional cultural symbols and contemporary efforts to counteract negative representations of womanhood in literature and society. Offering a new perspective on the oppositional nature of Latina writers, Sandoval emphasizes the ways in which national literatures have privileged male authors, whose viewpoint is generally distinct from that of women--a point of departure rarely acknowledged in postcolonial theory. Applying her observations to the disciplinary, historical, and spatial facets of literary production, Sandoval interrogates the boundaries of the Latina experience. Building on the dialogues begun with such works as Sonia Saldivar-Hull's Feminism on the Border and Ellen McCracken's New Latina Narrative, this is a concise yet ambitious comparative approach to the historical and cultural connections (as well as disparities) found in Chicana and Mexicana literature.
The Translational Turn : Latinx Literature into the Mainstream No contemporary development underscores the transnational linkage between the United States and Spanish-language América today more than the wave of in-migration from Spanish-language countries during the 1980s and 1990s.  This development, among others, has made clear what has always been true, that the United States is part of Spanish-language América.  Translation and oral communication from Spanish to English have been constant phenomena since before the annexation of the Mexican Southwest in 1848. The expanding number of counter-national translations from English to Spanish of Latinx fictional narratives by mainstream presses between the 1990s and 2010 is an indication of significant change in the relationship.  A Translational Turn explores both the historical reality of Spanish to English translation and the "new" counter-national English to Spanish translation of Latinx narratives.  More than theorizing about translation, this book underscores long-standing contact, such as code-mixing and bi-multilingualism, between the two languages in U.S. language and culture.  Although some political groups in this country persist in seeing and representing this country as having a single national tongue and community, the linguistic ecology of both major cities and the suburban periphery, here and in the global world, is bilingualism and multilingualism.

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Chicano Literature
Hispanic-American Writers This new edition of ""Hispanic-American Writers"" offers critical perspectives on the many Hispanic authors who have staked out a vibrant and burgeoning presence on the American literary scene. This addition to the ""Bloom's Modern Critical Views"" series is enhanced by a chronology, bibliography, notes on the contributors, and a introductory essay by noted literary professor Harold Bloom.
Migrant Song: Politics and Process in Contemporary Chicano Literature Migration and continuity have shaped both the Chicano people and their oral and written literature. In this pathfinding study of Chicano literature, Teresa McKenna specifically explores how these works arise out of social, political, and psychological conflict and how the development of Chicano literature is inextricably embedded in this fact. McKenna begins by appraising the evolution of Chicano literature from oral forms--including the important role of the corrido in the development of Chicano poetry. In subsequent chapters she examines the works of Richard Rodriguez and Rolando Hinojosa. She also devotes a chapter to the development of the Chicana voice in Chicano literature. Her epilogue considers the parallel development of Chicano literary theory and discusses some possible directions for research. In McKenna's own words, "I believe that the future of this literature, as that of all literatures by people of color in the United States, rests largely on its being effectively introduced into the curricula at all levels, as well as its entrance into the critical consciousness of literary theory." This book will be an important step in that process.
Movements in Chicano Poetry : Against Myths, Against Margins Interpreting specific poems by some of the best known Chicano writers, this book studies the central aesthetic and thematic concerns recent Chicano poetry addresses. Drawing on current theories of postmodernity and postcoloniality, it places a 'minority' literature within the central concerns of contemporary literary and cultural studies. The book addresses the most important issues related to Chicano identity, especially focusing on the contribution women writers and thinkers have made in articulating this identity. The study will thus be of interest to scholars specialising in feminist, cultural as well as Chicano/a studies.
Patriarchy in Sandra Cisneros's the House on Mango Street This compelling book offers an in-depth examination of patriarchy as presented in Sandra Cisneros's novel The House on Mango Street, as well as contemporary perspectives on this issue. Discussions include how the protagonist's female gender affects reaction to the book's coming-of-age message, how themes of oppression and marginalization play out among the characters, and what Esperanza's personality says about her relationships to males in the novel.
Reconstructing a Chicano/a Literary Heritage Early literary works written in Spanish in what is today the American Southwest have been largely excluded from the corpus of American literature, yet these documents are the literary antecedents of contemporary Chicano and Chicana writing.This collection of essays establishes the importance of this literary heritage through a critical examination of key texts produced in the Southwest from 1542 to 1848. Drawing on research in the archives of Southwestern libraries and applying contemporary literary theoretical constructs to these centuries-old manuscripts, the authors--all noted scholars in Chicano literature--demonstrate that these works should be recognized as an integral part of American literature.CONTENTS Introduction: Reconstructing a Chicano/a Literary Heritage, by Mar#65533;a Herrera-Sobek Part I: Critical Reconstruction Shipwrecked in the Seas of Signification: Cabeza de Vaca's La Relaci#65533;n and Chicano Literature, by Juan Bruce-Novoa Discontinuous Continuities: Remapping the Terrain of Spanish Colonial Narrative, by Genaro Padilla A Franciscan Mission Manual: The Discourse of Power and Social Organization, by Tino Villanueva The Politics of Theater in Colonial New Mexico: Drama and the Rhetoric of Conquest, by Ram#65533;n Guti#65533;rrez The Comedia de Ad#65533;n y Eva and Language Acquisition: A Lacanian Hermeneutics of a New Mexican Shepherds' Play, by Mar#65533;a Herrera-Sobek Part II: Sources of Reconstruction Poetic Discourse in P#65533;rez de Villagr#65533;'s Historia de la Nueva M#65533;xico, by Luis Leal Fray Ger#65533;nimo Boscana's Chinigchinich: An Early California Text in Search of a Context, by Francisco A. Lomel#65533; "#65533;Y D#65533;nde Estaban las Mujeres?": In Pursuit of an Hispana Literary and Historical Heritage in Colonial New Mexico, 1580-1840, by Tey Diana Rebolledo Entre C#65533;bolos Criado: Images of Native Americans in the Popular Culture of Colonial New Mexico, by Enrique Lamadrid
Rudolfo A. Anaya: Focus on Criticism