Chicano Narrative: Dialectics of Difference

by Ramon Saldivar

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.

264 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 1990

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned a lot from this one.

[Nic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book in the 2020s, many parts of this book and the type of reading he employs on these texts do feel a bit outdated. But his key insights into the archive of texts he exams still feel spot on. Chicano Narrative represents a key shift in how to read Chicana/o fiction up until the late 1980s and a bit after, and made valuable and still useful considerations regarding the stakes of canon formation and the idea of American Literature. Still worth assigning in your grad classes and informing your own understanding of Chicano narrative.