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Criticism in the Borderlands

Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology

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Post-Contemporary Interventions

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Pages: 312

Published: May 1991

This pathbreaking anthology of Chicano literary criticism, with essays on a remarkable range of texts—both old and new—draws on diverse perspectives in contemporary literary and cultural studies: from ethnographic to postmodernist, from Marxist to feminist, from cultural materialist to new historicist.
The editors have organized essays around four board themes: the situation of Chicano literary studies within American literary history and debates about the “canon”; representations of the Chicana/o subject; genre, ideology, and history; and the aesthetics of Chicano literature. The volume as a whole aims at generating new ways of understanding what counts as culture and “theory” and who counts as a theorist. A selected and annotated bibliography of contemporary Chicano literary criticism is also included.

By recovering neglected authors and texts and introducing readers to an emergent Chicano canon, by introducing new perspectives on American literary history, ethnicity, gender, culture, and the literary process itself, Criticism in the Borderlands is an agenda-setting collection that moves beyond previous scholarship to open up the field of Chicano literary studies and to define anew what is American literature.

Contributors. Norma Alarcón, Héctor Calderón, Angie Chabram, Barbara Harlow, Rolando Hinojosa, Luis Leal, José E. Limón, Terese McKenna, Elizabeth J. Ordóñez, Genero Padilla, Alvina E. Quintana, Renato Rosaldo, José David Saldívar, Sonia Saldívar-Hull, Rosaura Sánchez, Roberto Trujillo

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Table Of Contents

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Acknowledgments  ix
Foreword: Redefining American Literature / Roland Hinojosa  xi
Editors' Introduction: Criticism in the Borderlands  1
Part I. Institutional Studies and the Literary Canon
Narrative, Ideology, and the Reconstruction of American Literary History / Ramón Saldívar  11
The Rewriting of American Literary History / Luis Leal  21
The Theoretical Subject(s) of This Bridge Called My Back and Anglo-American Feminism / Norma Alarcón  28
Part II. Representations of the Chicana/o Subject: Race, Class, and Gender
Imprisoned Narrative? Or Lies, Secrets, and Silence in New Mexico Women's Autobiography / Genaro Padilla  43
Body, Spirit, and the Text: Alma Villanueva's Life Span / Elizabeth J. Ordóñez  61
Ana Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters: The Novelist as Ethnographer / Alvina E. Quintana  72
Fables of the Fallen Guy / Renato Rosaldo 84
Part III. Genre, Ideology, and History
The Novel and the Community of Readers: Rereading Tomás Rivera's Y no se le tragó la tierra / Héctor Calderón  97
Ideological Discourses in Arturo Islas's The Rain God / Rosaura Sánchez  114
Conceptualizing Chicano Critical Discourse / Angie Chabram  127
Sites of Struggle: Immigration, Deportation, Prison, and Exile / Barbara Harlow  149
Part IV. Aesthetics of the Border
Chicano Border Narratives as Cultural Critique / José David Saldívar  167
On Chicano Poetry and the Political Age: Corridos as Social Drama / Teresa McKenna  188
Feminism on the Border / From Gender Politics to Geopolitics / Sonia Saldívar-Hull  203
Dancing with the Devil: Society, Gender, and the Political Unconcious in Mexican-American South Texas / José E. Limón  221
Works Cited  237
Selected and Annotated Bibliography of Contemporary Chicano Literary Criticism  260
Index  275
Contributors  287

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Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-1143-0 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8223-1137-9 / eISBN: 978-0-8223-8235-5 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822382355

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