Aztlan: Essays on the Chicano Homeland

Querencias Series

by Rudolfo Anaya (Editor)

... As a symbol for political action, a place of spiritual plentitude, or as a challenge to transcend ethnic borders, Aztlan emerges throughout these essays as one of the Chicano Movement's fundamental ideological constructs. This volume will be of interest to students and critics concerned with the understanding and comprehensive reconstruction of one of the Chicano cultural emblems of the late 1960s. Given the present emphasis in Chicano studies on discourse analysis and critique of ideologies, this volume is a contribution to Chicano cultural criticism.Roberto Cantu, California State University

248 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1989

About the author

Rudolfo Anaya lives and breathes the landscape of the Southwest. It is a powerful force, full of magic and myth, integral to his writings. Anaya, however, is a native Hispanic fascinated by cultural crossings unique to the Southwest, a combination of oldSpain and New Spain, of Mexico with Mesoamerica and the anglicizing forces of the twentieth century. Rudolfo Anaya is widely acclaimed as the founder of modern Chicano literature. According to the New York Times, he is the most widely read author in Hispanic communities, and sales of his classic Bless Me, Ultima (1972) have surpassed 360,000, despite the fact that none of his books have been published originally by New York publishing houses. His works are standard texts in Chicano studies and literature courses around the world, and he has done more than perhaps any other single person to promote publication of books by Hispanic authors in this country. With the publication of his novel, Albuquerque (1992),Newsweek has proclaimed him a front-runner in "what is better called not the new multicultural writing, but the new American writing." His most recent volume, published in 1995, is Zia Summer.

"I've always used the technique of the cuento. I am an oral storyteller, but now I do it on the printed page. I think if we were very wise we would use that same tradition in video cassettes, in movies, and on radio."

from
http://www.unm.edu/~wrtgsw/anaya.html
and
http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_reso...

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note: The recent most updated 2017 version of this book does not seem to be on Goodreads, which contains several more essay entries.

I highly recommend this book to any Chicanos/Mexican-Americans who would like to delve into the philosophy and history of Aztlán as a concept whose significance and meaning has evolved throughout time, from an origin myth of the Mexica to the envisioned return to the ancestral and spiritual homelands as crafted by the Chicano Rights Movement in the 1960s, along with the myriad complications which fill the gaps in between and beyond.

This collection of essays also serves as a primer on events which have led to the current societal role and status of those of Mexican ethnicity in the United States. An illuminating read.

[Mills College Library]

305.868 A997 2017