Chicano Poetry
Chicano poetry refers to the body of literature written by Mexican Americans in the United States, often exploring themes of identity, culture, and social justice. It emerged as a powerful form of artistic expression during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and continues to be a significant voice in American literature, offering unique perspectives on the experiences of the Chicano community.
6 Key excerpts on "Chicano Poetry"
- David William Foster(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...These Cubans are, consequently, political exiles rather than working class immigrants. II. Chicano Literature One of the most patently visible facets of Chicanos' efforts in the sixties and seventies to assert themselves through a form of cultural nationalism was a burgeoning corpus of creative literature that, above all, served as a vehicle of self-knowledge. In their task of accumulating evidence for a collective self-portrait, Chicano writers, in the literary production of the last two-and-a-half decades, have explored their past, revitalized and mystified their cultural values, and examined what it means to exist in the interstices and on the borders of two monolithic cultures. Initially called a renaissance phenomenon, this corpus of literature did not develop in a vacuum. It is based on a solid literary tradition that has its origins in the exploration and settlement of the Southwest by inhabitants of Mexico and Spain more than four centuries ago. Luis Leal elucidates the background of Chicano literature of the prerenaissance period by pointing out four distinct stages of development (18-30). During the Hispanic phase, 1542-1821, he includes dozens of chronicles and travel journals, among them the Naufragios y comentarios (The Journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca; 1542) by Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1490-1557), Relación del descubrimiento de las siete ciudades de Cíbola (Account of the Discovery of the Seven Cities of Cibola ; 1539) by Fray Marcos de Niza (ca. 1510-ca. 1570), and Pedro de Castañeda (dates unknown) Relación de la jornada de Coronado (The Journey of Coronado; 1542). One of the most important works of this period, an epic poem of 34 vergillian cantos by Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá (1555-1620), Historia de la Nueva México (History of New Mexico; 1610), was unfortunately cast into the category of good history and bad poetry by an early reader...
eBook - ePubMassacre of the Dreamers
Essays on Xicanisma. 20th Anniversary Updated Edition.
- Ana Castillo(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- University of New Mexico Press(Publisher)
...What is most provocative and significant in contemporary Chicana literature is that while we claim and explore these cultural metaphors as symbols of rebellion against the dominant culture, we have also taken on the revisioning of our own culture’s metaphors, informed as they are by male perceptions. As an example, we need only look at the figure of Malintzin/doña Marina/La Malinche. As the mother of the son of the Conquistador, she was traditionally thought of in México as a symbol of betrayal of the indigenous race. Feministas reinterpreted Malintzin in a variety of ways—from slave victim, heroine, and mother of the mestizo race to genius linguist and military strategist. By viewing her with compassion, we have attempted to clarify how the patriarchal conquest ultimately left the young Mexic Amerindian woman little choice but to obey in the name of God the Father. Our early poetry, primarily intended to catalyze resistance and to stir the hearts of the pueblo, was one that employed verve and vigor of daily life. The emergence and vitality of this poetry played an important role in the Chicano movement’s two primary goals: the gaining of legitimate acknowledgment by dominant society, thereby generating greater educational and economic opportunities, and the affirming of our unique cultural identity in an Anglocentric society. By the 1980s, however, we had reached a new phase in our poetics of self-definition. As mestizas, we took a critical look at language (all our languages and patois combinations), with the understanding that language was not something that remained apart from experience...
eBook - ePub- Carlos Manuel Salomon, Carlos Manuel Salomon(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Poesía testimonial chicana de mujeres (México: Claustro de Sor Juana, CISAN, UNAM, 2012). 10 Aralia López-González, Amelia Malagamba, Elena Urrutia, coordinadoras. México, D.F.: Colegio de México, Programa Interdisciplinario de Estudios de la Mujer; Tijuana, B.C., México: Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 1990. 11 Many other students are exploring Chicano Studies, including the following. Itzel Hernández de la Cruz, 2012, in Hispanic Language and Letters wrote her master’s thesis: “Canícula: ‘Autoetnografía’ Ficcional de Norma Elia Cantú” [“Canícula: The Autoethnographic Fiction of Norma Elia Cantú”], conducting a literary analysis and of the deployed strategies in Cantú’s work. Elías Ángeles Hernández, 2007, in International Relations wrote his master’s thesis on Chicano muralism, entitled: “El despertar de los México-Americanos y el muralismo chicano como expresión de la lucha y afirmación de identidad” [“Mexican-American Awakening and Chicano Muralism as an Expression of Struggle and Affirmation of Identity”], in which he works with the Civil Rights Movement, Chicanismo as an ideology, and Chicano muralism as a politico-aesthetic manifestation. Sara Ugalde Guzmán, 2005, in Hispanic Language and Letters wrote her master’s thesis entitled, “La Nueva Mestiza. Obra poética de escritoras chicanas contemporáneas” [“The New Mestiza: Poetry by Contemporary Chicana Writers”], about Gloria Anzaldúa’s and Ana Castillo’s poetry and the psychological, historical, and literary elements in their work with attention to gender. Victor Hugo Millán Rodríguez, 2005, in Sociology wrote his master’s thesis “La identidad cultural chicana desde la mirada del cine estadounidense, mexicano y chicano” [“Chicana/o Cultural Identity from the U.S., Mexican, and Chicano Filmic Gaze”], about the meaning of pocho, the definition of pachuco, the signification and connotation of Chicano, and the meaning of cholo as categories developed in Chicano film of the struggle for Chicano cultural identity...
eBook - ePubFeminist Art Criticism
An Anthology
- Arlene Raven(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The second fact concerns the number of women today who can be counted in their ranks, whether in the fields of literature, drama, dance, or the visual arts. The third matter to be considered are the multiple oppressions Chicanas had to confront and conquer before they could achieve the first state: that of being artists. The pith and essence of what is presented by Chicana artists derives from a specific social history, the lived experiences of that history, and the matured reflections made on that history by artists born Chicana in “occupied America.” The Chicano socio-political movement (as differentiated from the Mexican and Mexican American movements preceding it) began in 1965, as a result of the grape pickers’ strike in Delano, California, that triggered the imagination of a whole generation of young people of Mexican descent. It was followed in 1966 by a demonstration in Albuquerque, New Mexico; by the founding of the Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado, the same year; by the courthouse raid on behalf of land grant rights in northern New Mexico in 1967; by the founding in 1967 of campus organizations throughout the Southwest, and the consequent birth of terms like “Chicano” and “chicanismo”; by the formation in 1967 of the Raza Unida Party in El Paso, Texas; by the 1968 student “blowouts” from East Los Angeles high schools and the Third World strike at San Francisco State University; by the anti-Vietnam war demonstration of 1969 and the Chicano Moratorium of 1970, both in Los Angeles. These and many other economic and political events in the Southwest and the Midwest, were accompanied by a cultural explosion with a sufficient number of unifying symbols and characteristics to be considered a cultural movement —one that articulated the Chicano experience in the United States. The Chicano experience was not a simple one to express, beginning with its self-designation...
eBook - ePub- Philip Swanson(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chicano writing is as diverse as the urban and rural geographic areas and the different states and regions in which Chicanos live. Moreover, there are Chicanos who do not share the discrimination and isolation addressed in González’s poem or in Valdés’s play. In Hunger of Memory (1981), Richard Rodríguez is not drawn to an Aztec past or to a present of struggle for rights and justice. On the contrary, Rodríguez has argued against affirmative action and bilingual education. But Chicanas highlight the most notable change in Chicano literature, as they define a position that emerges from the Chicano movement and takes it to a totally different level of identity and self-awareness. 3 Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderland/La Frontera (1987) best represents the Chicana feminist writings of discovery and self-awareness. Just as I am Joaquín is a poem of coming to terms with who you are, in Borderland/La Frontera Anzaldúa accepts who she is and finds meaning and strength in being different: a Chicana lesbian of colour. In an article entitled ‘To(o) Queer the Writer-Loca, escritora y chicana’, Anzaldúa considers the term lesbian to be white and middle-class, which represents the English-only dominant culture. When lesbians name her, they bring Anzaldúa into the dominant culture, but not as an equal. They do so by erasing her colour and her class. Anzaldúa prefers the non-gender connotation of queer, which allows her to politicize the term as anti-imperialistic and anti-racist. In Borderland/La Frontera Anzaldúa proposes a new mestiza consciousness, that is, a new way of approaching knowledge. If Western thought looks at society as a binary opposition, Anzaldúa embraces it, considers a synthesis between the two, and moves to a third space. Borderland/La Frontera points to the physical and metaphorical borders that exist between Mexico and the USA, and a borderland, a ‘vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary...
eBook - ePubAztlán
Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Revised and Expanded Edition.
- Rudolfo Anaya, Francisco A. Lomelí, Enrique R. Lamadrid, Rudolfo Anaya, Francisco A. Lomelí, Enrique R. Lamadrid(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- University of New Mexico Press(Publisher)
...The impetus entailed creating a culturally autonomous movement to recover, reclaim, and regain much of what had been lost by indulging in positive portrayals, even romantic representations, of anything indigenous or folkloric that was Mexican—at times obsessively so. This led anthropologist Octavio I. Romano to suggest that Chicanos were seeking to represent the full spectrum of cultural pluralism instead of claiming purity, a configuration he envisioned in 1967 as mestizaje —social-racial admixtures that both defied and undermined homogeneity. 14 To define community in order to debunk the portrayals of Chicanas and Chicanos as an invisible minority or, worse, a straw culture, three foundational pillars had to be achieved once and for all: 1. The term Chicano came into prominence to galvanize an identity, to bring together people who had been splintered by so many labels, and to reduce the negative charge of Mexican and pocho, the latter referring to Mexican Americans who were viewed as assimilated 2. Spanglish was recognized as the main language, a particular form of interlingualism or code-switching 3. Aztlán was embraced to satisfy the longing for a homeland and for belonging to a place and a culture through the acknowledgement of indigenous ancestry The perception that in the 1960s Chicanos possessed little cultural clout points to a perceived lack of historical agency due to their limbo status between a nebulous Mexico and a racially charged United States. Chicanos at that time existed as a kind of subclass, as peripheral beings outside of mainstream American society—that is, as a people who counted only for their labor and whose presence was unimportant beyond their immediate usefulness. To answer some of these apprehensions, Marxist intellectuals and a second wave of Chicano cultural studies envisioned an international movement of Third World class struggle more linked to ideologies embedded in class fissures within a strict sociopolitical framework...
