Publisher's Synopsis
The editors have organized essays around four board themes: the situation of Chicano literary studies within American literary history and debates about the "canon"; representations of the Chicana/o subject; genre, ideology, and history; and the aesthetics of Chicano literature. The volume as a whole aims at generating new ways of understanding what counts as culture and "theory" and who counts as a theorist. A selected and annotated bibliography of contemporary Chicano literary criticism is also included.
By recovering neglected authors and texts and introducing readers to an emergent Chicano canon, by introducing new perspectives on American literary history, ethnicity, gender, culture, and the literary process itself, Criticism in the Borderlands is an agenda-setting collection that moves beyond previous scholarship to open up the field of Chicano literary studies and to define anew what is American literature.
Contributors. Norma Alarcón, Héctor Calderón, Angie Chabram, Barbara Harlow, Rolando Hinojosa, Luis Leal, José E. Limón, Terese McKenna, Elizabeth J. Ordóñez, Genero Padilla, Alvina E. Quintana, Renato Rosaldo, José David Saldìvar, Sonia Saldìvar-Hull, Rosaura Sánchez, Roberto Trujillo