Marissa K. Lopez
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814752616
- eISBN:
- 9780814753293
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814752616.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This book 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 ...
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This book 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. The book locates the origins of Chicano literature here, 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, the book explores the shifting literary forms authors have used to write the nation from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It 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. 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 American literature.Less
This book 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. The book locates the origins of Chicano literature here, 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, the book explores the shifting literary forms authors have used to write the nation from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It 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. 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 American literature.
Stephen Schryer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781503603677
- eISBN:
- 9781503606081
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503603677.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter focuses on the Chicano writer and lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta, whose novels, Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and Revolt of the Cockroach People, chart his transformation into a radical ...
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This chapter focuses on the Chicano writer and lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta, whose novels, Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and Revolt of the Cockroach People, chart his transformation into a radical lawyer for Los Angeles’s Brown Power Movement. Acosta began his career with Legal Services, a network of War on Poverty–funded Legal Aid offices. When he turned to movement activism, he radicalized Legal Services’ demand that lawyers use their expertise to challenge laws that work against the interest of their lower-class clients. This demand became central to Acosta’s version of process art. At the same time, Acosta’s work replicates gender biases that ran throughout the War on Poverty. His political turn entailed his rejection of welfare mothers as clients in favor of militant young men—a turn that paralleled the War on Poverty’s focus on male delinquents.Less
This chapter focuses on the Chicano writer and lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta, whose novels, Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and Revolt of the Cockroach People, chart his transformation into a radical lawyer for Los Angeles’s Brown Power Movement. Acosta began his career with Legal Services, a network of War on Poverty–funded Legal Aid offices. When he turned to movement activism, he radicalized Legal Services’ demand that lawyers use their expertise to challenge laws that work against the interest of their lower-class clients. This demand became central to Acosta’s version of process art. At the same time, Acosta’s work replicates gender biases that ran throughout the War on Poverty. His political turn entailed his rejection of welfare mothers as clients in favor of militant young men—a turn that paralleled the War on Poverty’s focus on male delinquents.
Ylce Irizarry
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039911
- eISBN:
- 9780252098079
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039911.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter outlines the development of nineteenth-century Chicana/o and Latina/o literature. Despite the critical success of the arrival text, writers engaged issues within Chicana/o and Latina/o ...
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This chapter outlines the development of nineteenth-century Chicana/o and Latina/o literature. Despite the critical success of the arrival text, writers engaged issues within Chicana/o and Latina/o America well before the multicultural literature boom of the 1980s. The chapter then studies Tomás Rivera's … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (1971) and Junot Díaz's Drown (1996). Rivera's novella is set in rural Texas migrant communities; Díaz's text follows the movements of a single family in urban New Jersey. Together, Rivera's and Díaz's books illustrate how the narrative of loss permeates both Chicana/o and Latina/o literature, even when the losses depicted occur within distinct temporal, geographic, and cultural spaces.Less
This chapter outlines the development of nineteenth-century Chicana/o and Latina/o literature. Despite the critical success of the arrival text, writers engaged issues within Chicana/o and Latina/o America well before the multicultural literature boom of the 1980s. The chapter then studies Tomás Rivera's … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (1971) and Junot Díaz's Drown (1996). Rivera's novella is set in rural Texas migrant communities; Díaz's text follows the movements of a single family in urban New Jersey. Together, Rivera's and Díaz's books illustrate how the narrative of loss permeates both Chicana/o and Latina/o literature, even when the losses depicted occur within distinct temporal, geographic, and cultural spaces.
Ylce Irizarry
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039911
- eISBN:
- 9780252098079
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039911.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This introductory chapter provides a background of Chicana/o and Latina/o literature. Chicana/o and Latina/o literature particularly demonstrate the increasing focus on empowerment—economic, ...
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This introductory chapter provides a background of Chicana/o and Latina/o literature. Chicana/o and Latina/o literature particularly demonstrate the increasing focus on empowerment—economic, political, and sexual—within Chicana/o and Latina/o America, not within Anglo-America. As such, the concept of the narratives developing in Chicana/o and Latina/o literature reflects an ongoing negotiation of form and meaning. That the narratives are told with varying elements, techniques, and genres should indicate their narrative dynamism, not a mutual inclusivity to either historical or mimetic representation. Indeed, the later novels of successful multiethnic authors explore larger cultural discourses, transnational migrations, and shifting literary aesthetics. This book then outlines specific narratives recurrent in Chicana/o and Latina/o literatures.Less
This introductory chapter provides a background of Chicana/o and Latina/o literature. Chicana/o and Latina/o literature particularly demonstrate the increasing focus on empowerment—economic, political, and sexual—within Chicana/o and Latina/o America, not within Anglo-America. As such, the concept of the narratives developing in Chicana/o and Latina/o literature reflects an ongoing negotiation of form and meaning. That the narratives are told with varying elements, techniques, and genres should indicate their narrative dynamism, not a mutual inclusivity to either historical or mimetic representation. Indeed, the later novels of successful multiethnic authors explore larger cultural discourses, transnational migrations, and shifting literary aesthetics. This book then outlines specific narratives recurrent in Chicana/o and Latina/o literatures.
Jennifer Harford Vargas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190642853
- eISBN:
- 9780190642884
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190642853.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature, World Literature
Chapter 2 teases out the fraught links between authoritarianism, authority, and authorship, using Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper. The characters stage a revolution against the author of ...
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Chapter 2 teases out the fraught links between authoritarianism, authority, and authorship, using Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper. The characters stage a revolution against the author of their world, whom they accuse of controlling the plots of their lives and using omniscient narration to profit from their stories. In contrast to the author-as-god analogy, the chapter explores the analogy of the author-as-dictator. The layout of the novel formally reflects the effects of surveillance and visually depicts the struggle against the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border and the exploitation of undocumented migrants. The novel grapples with the problem of defending the rights of agricultural laborers and people without papers in the pages of a novel that circulates as a commodity and poses questions about possible alternative economic and narrative ethics that could be used in the service of social and narrative justice. The chapter ultimately wrestles with the contradiction that writing, which is as a form of power and violence, is used to resist repressive power.Less
Chapter 2 teases out the fraught links between authoritarianism, authority, and authorship, using Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper. The characters stage a revolution against the author of their world, whom they accuse of controlling the plots of their lives and using omniscient narration to profit from their stories. In contrast to the author-as-god analogy, the chapter explores the analogy of the author-as-dictator. The layout of the novel formally reflects the effects of surveillance and visually depicts the struggle against the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border and the exploitation of undocumented migrants. The novel grapples with the problem of defending the rights of agricultural laborers and people without papers in the pages of a novel that circulates as a commodity and poses questions about possible alternative economic and narrative ethics that could be used in the service of social and narrative justice. The chapter ultimately wrestles with the contradiction that writing, which is as a form of power and violence, is used to resist repressive power.
