Post-Revolutionary Chicana Literature

Memoir, Folklore and Fiction of the Border, 1900–1950

Sam Lopez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780415955539
• eBook ISBN: 9781135915681
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Mexican History
• Index: History

This book examines how Chicana literature in three genres—memoir, folklore, and fiction—arose at the turn of the twentieth century in the borderlands of the United States and Mexico. Lopez examines three women writers and highlights their contributions to Chicana writing in its earliest years as well as their contributions to the genres in which they wrote. The women -- Leonor Villegas de Magnón, Jovita Idar, and Josefina Niggli—represent three powerful voices from which to gain a clearer understanding of women's lives and struggles during and after the Mexican Revolution and also, offer surprising insights into women's active roles in border life and the revolution itself. Readers are encouraged to rethink Chicana lives, and expand their ideas of "Chicana" from a subset of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s to a vibrant and vigorous reality stretching back into the past.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One Politics of Place: Laredo as Case Study
• Chapter Two “Do they not remember the brave women?”: Rethinking/Rewriting Border Women in Leonor Villegas de Magnón’s the Rebel
• Chapter Three The Moon and the Unfortunate Lover: Folklore and Feminism in Jovita González’ Dew on the Thorn
• Chapter Four The People Beyond the Mountains: Crossing Boundaries with Josephina Niggli’s Mexican Village
• Conclusion A Tolerance for Ambiguity
• Appendix La Crónica
• Notes
• Bibliography