The first comprehensive interpretation of the work of a major figure in Chicano literature, Klaus Zilles's study of the fourteen novels in Rolando Hinojosa's Klail City Death Trip series will appeal equally to the specialist, to the student, and to the interested reader of Hinojosa's intriguing and innovative "Tejano" novels. The series is dedicated to revealing the suppressed oral history of Mexican Texas and to making the reader a companion on a quest for this elusive history. Published between 1973 and 1998, the Klail City series ranges in historical time from the mid-1700s to the end of the twentieth century, attesting to 250 years of Spanish-Mexican presence in the Lower Río Grande Valley of Texas. The main body of Hinojosa's series, however, is set in fictitious Belken County, located on the U.S./Mexico border, and charts the lives of Hinojosa's two protagonists, Rafe Buenrostro and his cousin, Jehú Malacara, two men raised in the rigidly segregated world of a South Texas farming community. The Klail City series constitutes a truly "novel" approach to the novel: each installment in the cycle differs from the one before it in genre (the adult Buenrostro becomes a police detective and appears in several mystery novels), in narrative style (one novel is written entirely in verse, while another takes epistolary form), or in language (Hinojosa writes in Spanish, in English, in Chicano idiom, and in mixtures of all three). Zilles accomplishment is to provide a critical guide to the complicated fictional world that Hinojosa creates. By showing the profusion of forms and styles Hinojosa deploys, Zilles reveals the true dimensions of Hinojosa's design. "What makes Zilles so refreshing is his style. . . . He writes in a language accessible to the average reader. His work is solid, informative, thoughtful, and useful. I recommend it highly."--Juan Bruce-Novoa, Harvard University

This collection of critical essays addresses the complex relationship between contemporary literature theory and Chicano literature„a literature that is not part of the traditional literary cannon. The contributors, including Yolanda Julia Broyles, H?ctor CalderÑn, Margarita Cotà-Càrdenas, Lauro Flores, Patricia de la Fuente, Rolando Hinojosa, Luis Leal, Jos? David SaldÕvar, RamÑn SaldÕvar, MarÕa I. Duke dos Santos, and Rosaura Sànchez, draw upon a diverse array of theories„Marxist, feminist, post-structuralist„to make fresh, critical comments, not only on Rolando HinojosaÍs work, Klail City Death Trip series, but also on literary theory today.

Rolando Hinojosa is a Texas writer with his sense of place centered in the Texas Valley, a world in itself and a place recognizable as a discrete community. But Hinojosa's work transcends the regional, transcends the Valley, transcends Texas, while it remains rooted in all three. Hinojosa is treated here from the perspective of his place in the mainstream of American literature and with his attempts to write works that speak to a large and more diverse audience, rather than from the perspective of his place within the world of Texas-Mexican literature. Joyce Lee does not neglect the regional aspects of Hinojosa's works, but puts them into the context of what they say about the vitality of American culture at large and about the Mexican culture's variations of the American Dream. Covers Hinojosa's full-length books-- Dear Rafe, Klail City, The Useless Servants, The Valley, Partners in Crime, and Rites and Witnesses --as well as his essays and articles.

Interviews with major Chicana/o authors are the basis for this examination of the commonality of issues in the work of each of them.

This volume brings together a number of critical essays on three selected topics: biography, nationhood, and globalism. Written exclusively for this book by specialists from Mexico, Germany, and the United States, the essays propose a reexamination of Mexican American cultural history from a twenty-first century standpoint, written in English and approached from different analytical models and critical methods, but free of theoretical jargon. The essays range from biographies and memoirs by leading Chicano historians and studies of globalism during the rule of Imperial Spain (1492-1898), to the modern rise and global influence of the United States, particularly in Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean. Also included are critical studies of novels by Chicano, Latin American, and Caribbean writers who narrate and represent the dominant role played by the United States both within the nation itself and in the Caribbean, thus illustrating the historical parallels and relations that bind Latinos and Americans of Mexican descent. This book will be of importance to literary historians, literary critics, teachers, students, and readers interested in stimulating and unconventional studies of Mexican American cultural history from a global perspective.

U.S. Latino Literature is defined as Latino literature within the United States that embraces the heterogeneous inter-groupings of Latinos. For too long U.S. Latino literature has not been thought of as an integral part of the overall shared American literary landscape, but that is slowly changing. This dictionary aims to rectify some of those misconceptions by proving that Latinos do fundamentally express American issues, concerns and perspectives with a flair in linguistic cadences, familial themes, distinct world views, and cross-cultural voices. The Historical Dictionary of U.S. Latino Literature contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has cross-referenced entries on U.S. Latino/a authors, and terms relevant to the nature of U.S. Latino literature in order to illustrate and corroborate its foundational bearings within the overall American literary experience. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about this subject.

Once relegated to the borders of literature—neither Mexican nor truly American—Chicana/o writers have always been in the vanguard of change, articulating the multicultural ethnicities, shifting identities, border realities, and even postmodern anxieties and hostilities that already characterize the twenty-first century. Indeed, it is Chicana/o writers' very in-between-ness that makes them authentic spokespersons for an America that is becoming increasingly Mexican/Latin American and for a Mexico that is ever more Americanized. In this pioneering study, Héctor Calderón looks at seven Chicana and Chicano writers whose narratives constitute what he terms an American Mexican literature. Drawing on the concept of "Greater Mexican" culture first articulated by Américo Paredes, Calderón explores how the works of Paredes, Rudolfo Anaya, Tomás Rivera, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Cherríe Moraga, Rolando Hinojosa, and Sandra Cisneros derive from Mexican literary traditions and genres that reach all the way back to the colonial era. His readings cover a wide span of time (1892-2001), from the invention of the Spanish Southwest in the nineteenth century to the América Mexicana that is currently emerging on both sides of the border. In addition to his own readings of the works, Calderón also includes the writers' perspectives on their place in American/Mexican literature through excerpts from their personal papers and interviews, correspondence, and e-mail exchanges he conducted with most of them.

Offers a comprehensive overview of the most important authors, movements, genres, and historical turning points in Latino literature. More than 60 million Latinos currently live in the United States. Yet contributions from writers who trace their heritage to the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Mexico have and continue to be overlooked by critics and general audiences alike. Latino Literature: An Encyclopedia for Students gathers the best from these authors and presents them to readers in an informed and accessible way. Intended to be a useful resource for students, this volume introduces the key figures and genres central to Latino literature. Entries are written by prominent and emerging scholars and are comprehensive in their coverage of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Different critical approaches inform and interpret the myriad complexities of Latino literary production over the last several hundred years. Finally, detailed historical and cultural accounts of Latino diasporas also enrich readers' understandings of the writings that have and continue to be influenced by changes in cultural geography, providing readers with the information they need to appreciate a body of work that will continue to flourish in and alongside Latino communities.

Short Fiction by Hispanic Writers of the United States includes representative works by the most celebrated Cuban-American, Mexican-American and Puerto Rican writers of short fiction in the country. The texts cover a full range of expression, themes and styles of US Hispanics and are introduced by informative entries which place the authors in their cultural and historic frameworks. In these pages, the reader will not find picturesque, folksy or touristy renditions of Hispanic culture. Instead, Short Fiction by Hispanic Writers of the United States brings together works that are clear, incisive and authentic representations of Hispanic life in the United States. The selections are as diverse as Hispanic culture itself and as varied as the personalities of their authors. Here are Max Mart’nezÕs outrageous challenge of racial and social structures, Roberta Fern‡ndezÕs construction of Hispanic womenÕs aesthetics, Roberto Fern‡ndezÕs subversion of the English language, Nicholasa MohrÕs humorous attack on patriarchy, and Judith Ortiz CoferÕs poetic evocation of childhood and biculturalism. This collection engages in aesthetic and cultural experience that will result in a re-defined canon and a new identity for the country as whole. They are re-focusing our perception of ourselves as a people and a culture. The pressure and the commitment to do so, of course, make for excellence and innovation in literary expression. It also makes for enjoyable reading. Short Fiction by Hispanic Writers of the United States is recommended for the general fiction reader and for use in high school and college literature classes in search of a multicultural perspective.

In struggling to retain their cultural unity, the Mexican-American communities of the American Southwest in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have produced a significant body of literature. Chicano Narrative examines representative narratives--including the novel, short story, narrative verse, and autobiography--that have been excluded from the American canon.