Chicano literature

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As a Chicano Literature ( English Chicano literature ) is understood the totality of narrative and lyrical works created by authors who themselves as members of the US Chicano see Association of. Chicano is understood to mean the Mexicans living in the United States and their descendants ( Mexican Americans ). Occasionally, the term Chicana literature is also used. This part of Chicano literature looks at the experiences of female Mexican Americans. According to the United States Census Bureau , there were 31.7 million Americans in 2009 whose ancestors were Mexican.

The origin of Chicano literature goes back to the 16th century. The majority of Chicano literature, however, emerged after 1848, after the United States annexed large areas of what had previously belonged to Mexico as a result of the Mexican-American War . Today, Chicano literature is an integral part of the US literary scene, reflecting in many ways the historical and cultural influences and dependencies between the southern and northern parts of North America.

definition

The term Chicano generally includes descendants of Mexicans who have lived in the United States for generations and those who have immigrated legally or illegally in the last few decades. Their degree of assimilation as well as their experience as a cultural and predominantly Spanish-speaking Catholic minority in a country dominated by English-speaking Protestants are correspondingly different. Therefore, only literary works by authors who identify with the Chicano culture are counted as Chicano literature. This broad definition means that Josefina Niggli , who was descended from Anglo-American parents and spent parts of her childhood and youth in Mexico, is considered to be part of Chicano literature.

history

Some literary scholars argue that the origins of Chicano literature go back to the 16th century: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca report "La Relación" published in 1542, which describes his long odyssey through areas that are now part of the south and southwest of the United States, centuries later it became the most important source of information about North America for historians, ethnologists and geographers before the European conquest. The literary scholar Lee Dowling also counts Inca Garcilaso de la Vega among the fathers of Chicano literature: In his opinion, his 1605 work “La Florida” is also an early work in Chicano literature.

Territory of Mexico to the USA: Mexican-American War (red), Gadsden purchase (yellow)

Chicano literature, however, is usually younger, with most works written after 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of February 2, 1848 ended the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) and moved the Texas border to the Rio Grande . The present US state of California ( Alta California ) and the whole area between Texas and California became American. The United States of America received more than half of Mexican territory: California, Arizona , New Mexico , Utah , Nevada , Texas, and part of Colorado and Wyoming . The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also gave Mexicans who lived in what is now the Southwestern United States the option of H. either to emigrate to Mexico within one year or to acquire US citizenship. Most became US citizens. The literary critic Ramón Saldívar emphasizes that "unlike many other ethnic minorities in the United States ... but similar to the indigenous peoples of North America, Mexican Americans became an ethnic minority through direct conquest of their homeland." The change in nationality did not result in an immediate change in cultural tradition or language. Over time, however, these Mexican Americans or Chicanos developed their own culture that was neither entirely part of the United States nor Mexico. According to Saldívar's assessment, Mexican-American culture gradually filled the gaps between the respective cultural spheres after 1848. This new cultural life was clearly a product of both spheres of influence, but at the same time clearly different from them. With the further immigration of Mexicans in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, this culture continued to change.

The literary critic Raymund Paredes takes the view that a clearly distinguishable Mexican-American literature existed as early as 1900. Paredes particularly emphasizes the importance of Josephina Niggli's novel Mexican Village , which he believes is the first literary work by a Mexican American to reach a broad US reading audience.

Major authors

Todos somos ilegales - We are all Illegals ("We are all illegals"), protest against the policy of the Immigration Service ( INS ) in California, which affects mainly Mexican immigrants.

The main Chicano authors include Rudolfo Anaya , Américo Paredes , Rodolfo Gonzales , Rafael C. Castillo , Julian S. Garcia , Gary Soto , Oscar Zeta Acosta , Luis Valdez , John Rechy , Luis Omar Salinas , Tino Villanueva , Denise Chavez , Daniel Olivas , Benjamin Alire Sáenz , Tomás Rivera , Luis Alberto Urrea , Lorna Dee Cervantes , Sergio Troncoso , Rigoberto González , Dagoberto Gilb , Rolando Hinojosa and Alicia Gaspar de Alba .

María Ruiz de Burton was the first Mexican-American author to publish in English in 1872. In her two novels and her only published play, she represents the point of view of the Mexican people who suddenly became US citizens after the defeat of Mexico in the Mexican-American War and the subsequent cession of Mexico to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and thus became a predominantly Spanish-speaking Catholic minority in a country dominated by English-speaking Protestants, which in no way granted them legal equality. Her personal background gave her special insights. Ruiz de Burton married an influential Protestant general whose career led her to spend part of her life on both the east and west coasts of the United States. She was a contemporary witness of the settlement of western North America as well as the American civil war with its consequences. Her work therefore deals with ethnicity , influence and power, gender roles and social class.

The literary critic Claudia Sadowski-Smith has called the author Sandra Cisneros probably the best-known Chicana writer and granted her a pioneering role as the first Mexican-American author to be published by one of the major American publishing houses. Cisnero's first novel Das Haus in Mango Straße was published in 1989 by the small publishing house Arte Público Press , whose publishing program was geared towards a reading public with Latin American roots. The second edition, on the other hand, was published in 1991 by Vintage Books , a publisher within the Random House group and one of the major publishing houses in the USA. In 1991, Woman Hollering Creek was published direct by Random House. As Cisneros' biographer Ganz notes, up until this point it was only male Chicano authors who had successfully switched to one of the major publishers. The fact that Cisnero's first novel attracted so much attention that a publisher such as Vintage Books took on it illustrates the growing importance of Chicano literature within the American literary scene.

In an interview on National Public Radio , Cisneros said on September 19, 1991.

“I don't think I can be happy if I'm the only one published by Random House when there are so many great writers - both Latinos and Latinas or Chicanos and Chicanas - who aren't great in the US Publishing houses are published or are not even known to them. If my success meant that the publishers would take a second look at these writers - and then publish them in large numbers, then we will finally arrive in this country. "

In addition to these writers who were actually Hispanics, there were also those who publish literature about this group under a Hispanic name, such as Daniel Lewis James (pseudonym: Danny Santiago).

literature

  • Gloria Anzaldúa: Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera Spinsters / Aunt Lute, San Francisco 1987, ISBN 978-0-933216-25-9 .
  • Harold Augenbraum, Margarite Fernández Olmos: The Latino Reader Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1997, ISBN 978-0-395-76528-9 .
  • Héctor Calderón, José David Saldívar: Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology. Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina 1991, ISBN 978-0-8223-1143-0 .
  • Heath, Markus. Overwriting boundaries : Chicano / a-narrative literature and the staging of cultural contact . Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 978-3-8253-1662-4
  • Reed Way Dasenbrock: Interviews with Writers of the Post-Colonial World University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 1992, ISBN 978-0-87805-572-2 , pp. 287-306.
  • Jacqueline Doyle: More Room of Her Own: Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street. In: MELUS. (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States) 19 (1994/4): pp. 5-35, doi: 10.2307 / 468200 .
  • Jacqueline Doyle: Haunting the Borderlands: La Llorona in Sandra Cisneros's Woman Hollering Creek. In: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. (University of Nebraska Press) 16 (1996/1): pp. 53-70, doi: 10.2307 / 3346922 .
  • Robin Ganz: Sandra Cisneros: Border Crossings and Beyond. In: MELUS. (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States) 19 (1994/1): 19-29, doi: 10.2307 / 467785 .
  • Deborah L. Madsen: Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, SC 2000, ISBN 978-1-57003-379-7 .
  • Alvina E. Quintana: Home Girls: Chicana Literary Voices. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1996, ISBN 978-1-56639-373-7 .
  • Claudia Sadowski-Smith: Border Fictions: Globalization, Empire, and Writing at the Boundaries of the United States. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville 2008, ISBN 978-0-8139-2689-6 .
  • Ramón Saldívar: Chicano Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin 1990, ISBN 978-0-299-12474-8 .

Single receipts

  1. ^ Heide, Markus: Overwriting boundaries: Chicano / a-narrative literature and the staging of cultural contact . Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 978-3-8253-1662-4 .
  2. ↑ US Office: Facts for Features: Cinco de Mayo. United States Census Bureau , accessed March 25, 2011 .
  3. ↑ Calderón, Saldívar: Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology. 1991, p. 7.
  4. ^ A b c Raymund Paredes: Teaching Chicano Literature: An Historical Approach. In: The Heath Anthology of American Literature Newsletter. (12), 1995.
  5. ↑ Mario T. García: Luis Leal: An Auto / Biography. University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas 2000, ISBN 978-0-292-72829-5 , p. 112.
  6. ↑ Udo Zindel: Odyssey through North America: Naked and lost in the wild. In: Spiegel Online. November 25, 2007, accessed February 22, 2014 .
  7. ↑ Lee Dowling: La Florida del Inca: Garcilaso's Literary Sources. In: Patricia Kay Galloway: The Hernando de Soto Expedition: History, Historiography, and “Discovery” in the Southeast. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE 2006, ISBN 978-0-8032-7122-7 , p. 139.
  8. ↑ a b Ramón Saldívar: Chicano Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin 1990, ISBN 978-0-299-12474-8 , p. 13. The original quote is: “unlike many other ethnic immigrants to the United States… but like the Native Americans, Mexican Americans became an ethnic minority through the direct conquest of their homelands. "
  9. ↑ a b Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita: Conflicts of Interest: The Letters of Mark Amparo Ruíz de Burton. In: Arte Público Press , Houston 2001, introduction.
  10. ^ Sadowski-Smith: Border Fictions: Globalization, Empire, and Writing at the Boundaries of the United States. 2008, p. 33.
  11. ^ Complete: Sandra Cisneros: Border Crossings and Beyond. 1994, p. 27.
  12. ^ Heide, Markus: Overwriting boundaries: Chicano / a-narrative literature and the staging of cultural contact . Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 978-3-8253-1662-4 , p. 19-36 and 63-93 .
  13. ↑ Interview with Tom Vitale on National Public Radio, quoted in Ganz 1994, p. 27.
  14. ^ Author Abandon's pseudonym. In: Los Angeles Times. on July 22, 1984. p. 18D.