Movements in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, against Margins

348 Pages·1995·6.1 MB·English

by  Rafael Perez-Torres

Movements in Chicano Poetry draws lines between three critical points: the poetic traditions
of Chicano culture, the critical discourses of postcoloniality and postmodernism, and the
production of contemporary Chicano poetry. The issues of cultural nationalism, subjec-
tivity, history, origin, and resistance inform many of the critical and imaginative texts
produced by both postcolonial and Chicano writers. As an integral part of the labor
force that has driven North American production, Chicanos have expressed through
writing the sense of decentered subjectivity and the violence that results from the pursuit
of such master narratives as progress and expansion. Chicano texts act as a primary testa-
ment to the social and economic disparities made plain by the critical light of postmod-
ernism. Consequently, individuals interested in postcoloniality and postmodernity can
learn much from the study of Chicano cultural production.
In this study, Perez-Torres engages these critical issues in analyses of poems by such
writers as Sandra Cisneros, Gary Soto, Gloria Anzaldua, Ana Castillo, Lorna Dee Cer-
vantes, Corky Gonzales, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alurista, Jose Montoya, and Lucha
Corpi. He addresses a series of questions important to the study of resistant cultural
practices: How do the critical issues raised in the early phase of Chicano poetry manifest
themselves today? How do contemporary poets write themselves and their work against
their immediate past? How do they write themselves against the disempowering posi-
tions offered by hegemonic cultural constructions of Chicano identity? How does the
poetry write itself against the grain of history?
Perez-Torres argues that Chicano poetry, rather than excluding or denying, incorpo-
rates and includes. This signals a movement toward a hybridization and crossbreeding
on a cultural level that mirrors the racial mestizaje responsible for producing the Chicano
people. This book represents part of new inquiry into notions of marginalization and
assimilation, into processes of cultural identification and construction, and into the
movements of a culture flourishing in a country which itself has been, from the very
beginning, a nation consumed with enacting and denying its own hybrid identity.

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE 88
Movements in Chicano Poetry
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Editor:
ERIC SUNDQUIST, University of California, Los Angeles
Founding Editor:
ALBERT GELPI, Stanford University
Advisory Board:
NINA BAYM, University of Illinois, Champaign—Urbana
SACVAN BERCOVITCH, Harvard University
ALBERT GELPI, Stanford University
MYRA JEHLEN, University of Pennsylvania
CAROLYN PORTER, University of California, Berkeley
ROBERT STEPTO, Yale University
TONY TANNER, King's College, Cambridge University
Books in the Series
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86. Kenneth Asher, T S. Eliot and Ideology
85. Robert Milder, Reimagining Thoreau
84. Blanche H. Gelfant, Literary Reckonings: A Cross-Cultural Triptych
83. Robert Tilton, The Pocahontas Narrative in Antebellum America
82. Joan Burbick, The Language of Health and the Culture of Nationalism in Nineteenth
Century America
81. Rena Fraden, Blueprints for a Black Federal Theatre, 1935-1939
80. Ed Folsom, Walt Whitman's Native Representations
79. Alan Filreis, Modernism from Right to Left
78. Michael E. Staub, Voices of Persuasion: The Politics of Representation in 1930s America
77. Katherine Kearns, Robert Frost and a Poetics of Appetite
76. Peter Halter, The Revolution in the Visual Arts and the Poetry of William Carlos Williams
75. Barry Ahearn, William Carlos Williams and Alterity: The Early Poetry
74. Linda A. Kinnahan, Poetics of the Feminine: Authority and Literary Tradition in William Carlos
Williams, Mina Loy, Denise Levertov, and Kathleen Fraser
73. Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692
72. Jon Lance Bacon, Flannery O'Connor and Cold War Culture
71. Nathaniel Mackey, Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturally and Experimental Writ
70. David M. Robinson, Emerson and the Conduct of Life
69. Cary Wolfe, The Limits of American Literary Ideology in Pound and Emerson
68. Andrew Levy, The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story
67. Stephen Fredman, The Grounding of American Poetry: Charles Olson and the Emersonian Traditi
66. David Wyatt, Out of the Sixties: Storytelling and the Vietnam Generation
Continued on pages following the Index
MOVEMENTS IN
CHICANO POETRY
Against Myths, Against Margins
RAFAEL PEREZ-TORRES
University of California, Santa Barbara
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
© Cambridge University Press 1995
First published 1995
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perez-Torres, Rafael.
Movements in Chicano poetry / [Rafael Perez-Torres].
p. cm. — (Cambridge studies in American literature and
culture : 88)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-521-47019-6. - ISBN 0-521-47803-0 (pbk.)
1. American poetry — Mexican American authors — History and
criticism. 2. Mexican Americans - Intellectual life. 3. Mexican
Americans in literature. I. Title. II. Series
PS153.M4T67 1995
811.009'86872 - dc20 94-22380
CIP
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-521-47019-6 hardback
ISBN 0-521-47803-0 paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2002
This book is dedicated
to Sergio and Arturo
and the 40 million more

Contents
Acknowledgments page xi
Introduction: Movements in a "Minority" Literature 1
Through the Gaps, across a Bridge 2
Grounding 4
Postcoloniality 8
Postmodernity 14
Notes on Terms and Methods 18
PART I. THE POSTCOLONIAL
Four or Five Worlds: Chicano/a Literary Criticism
as Postcolonial Discourse 23
At the Interstices 24
Bridging Other Worlds 29
Blocs, Parties, and La Raza Cosmica 35
Identidad, Movimiento, Resistencia 43
Writing Chicana/o 49
viii Contents
From the Homeland to the Borderlands, the
Reformation of Aztlan 56
A Land Divided 58
An Other Country: Rodolfo Gonzales 69
Retribalization: Jimmy Santiago Baca 77
Alien Nation: Lorna Dee Cervantes and Ana Castillo 84
Borderlands: Gloria Anzaldua 91
Locality, Locotes, and the Politics of Displacement 97
Buscando Justice 99
The Migrant: Abelardo, Sanchez, Villanueva,
Corpi, Baca, Soto 104
The Pinto: Sanchez, Lucero, Baca, Salinas 114
The Pachuco: Montoya and Vigil 123
Dispossessions: Romero and Mora 129
PART II. THE POSTMODERN
Migratory Readings: Chicana/o Literary Criticism
and the Postmodern 137
The Red and the Black 138
Traveling Jones 148
Mappings 152
Movement 161
Migration 169
Mythic "Memory" and Cultural Construction 172
Finding the Center 173
Closing the Circle: Alurista 176
Claiming the Present: Ana Castillo 184
Other Myths: Corpi, Cisneros, Cervantes 196
Other Memories: Baca and Anzaldua 201
Mouthing Off: Polyglossia and Radical Mestizaje 208
Pastiche: Francisco Alarcon 209
Minority Discourse: Deleuze and Guattari 216
La Lengua Mestiza: Alurista and Tafolla 218
Vernacularization: Tafolla and Baca 226
Interstitial/Interlingual: Anzaldua, Vigil, Rodriguez 234
PART III. CONFLUENCES
Between Worlds 245
Coyotes at the Border 246