Ends of assimilation : the formation of Chicano literature / John Alba Cutler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cutler, John Alba, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Mexican American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--Mexican American authors.

Assimilation (Sociology) in literature.

Physical Description:

ix, 275 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2015]

Summary:

Ends of Assimilation examines how Chicano literature imagines the conditions and costs of cultural change, arguing that its thematic preoccupation with assimilation illuminates the function of literature. John Alba Cutler shows how mid-century sociologists advanced a model of assimilation that ignored the interlinking of race, gender, and sexuality and characterized American culture as homogeneous, stable, the exceptional. He demonstrates how Chicano literary works from the postwar period to the present understand culture as dynamic and self-consciously promote literature as a medium for influencing the direction of cultural change. With original analyses of works by canonical and noncanonical writers-from Américo Paredes, Sandra Cisneros, and Jimmy Santiago Baca to Estela Portillo Trambley, Alfredo Véa, and Patricia Santana-Ends of Assimilation demands that we reevaluate assimilation, literature, and the very language we use to talk about culture. Book jacket.

Contents:

Ends of Assimilation 1

Disjunctive Histories 7

Assimilation as Ideology 10

The Formation of Chicano/a Literature 18

1 Becoming Mexican-American Literature 21

The Mexican-American Generation 21

"The First Mexican-American" 23

Pocho's Racial Boundaries 26

Nation Time(s) in George Washington Gómez 35

Gendered Assimilation in Caballero 44

Chicano/a Politics of Reception 50

2 Quinto Sol, Chicano/a Literature, and the Long March Through Institutions 56

Literature, Cultural Capital, Universities 56

Assimilation Sociology and Structural Inequality 60

Quinto Sol Literature and Chicano/a Cultural Nationalism 65

Literary Discourse in Estampas del Valle 71

Rethinking the University in Rain of Scorpions 78

3 Cultural Capital and the Singularity of Literature in Hunger of Memory and The Rain God 86

"Two Strong Men" 86

Hunger of Memory's Symbolic Capital 89

Masculine Alienation in The Rain God 95

Neoliberal Assimilation 103

Transnational Sympathies 110

4 Lyric Subjects, Cultures of Poverty, and Sandra Cisneros's Wicked Wicked Ways 118

Feminist Boundary Crossing 118

"No Adelita nor Malintzín" 122

Cultures of Poverty 126

Recovering Mango Street's Lyric Subjects 130

"The Big Rock Comes In" 135

Cisneros, Brooks, and "Bad" Women 141

"My Jewels, My Colicky Kids" 144

5 Segmented Assimilation and Jimmy Santiago Baca's Prison Counterpublics 153

Segmentation versus Boundary Crossing 153

Segmented Assimilation in Martín 156

Rereading Baca's Prison Poetics 161

Poetic Counterpublics 170

"The Poems are Signs that Tell Us Things" 174

6 Disappeared Men: Chicano/a Authenticity and the American War in Viet Nam 181

Remembering Viet Nam, Remembering the Movement 181

"The Buzz of the Reel" 185

Gods Go Begging and the Coloniality of Power 192

Border Thinking in Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility 199

Besieged Authenticities in Their Dogs Came with Them 204

Disappeared Men 211

Conclusion 214

Assimilation "Is Now Condemned" 214

What Was Chicano/a Literature? 219.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780190210113

0190210117

9780190210120

0190210125

OCLC:

889666431