“Chicano literature”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

The definition of Chicano or Mexican-American identity encompasses both Mexicans who have moved to the United States and US-born people of Mexican ancestry. The latter group includes people who lived in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of California before the United States annexed these areas, and who lived different experiences than those who were south of the line of annexation. Composed mostly of Spanish-speaking Catholics living in a predominantly English-speaking Protestant country, Chicanos have the status as a linguistic and cultural minority.

Chicano literature also has a racial dynamic; some Mexican-Americans define themselves as mestizo, people with a mixture of primarily indigenous and European heritage, while others fit within the Hispano demographic of people with primarily Spanish heritage. African-descended Mexicans also contribute to this field, with the last governor of Alta California, Pío Pico, having African heritage.^[2] There are also people who do not fit easily in these definitions, such as Josefina Niggli, whose parents were Euro-Americans living in Mexico when she was born; although she is considered Anglo in the broader ethnic sense of the term, she felt more connected to Mexican culture {{Citation needed|date=March 2019}} and wrote most of her novels and plays around Mexican themes.

Chicano or Mexican-American writing includes those works in which writers' sense of ethnic identity or chicanismo animates their work manifestly and fundamentally, often through the presentation of Chicano characters, cultural situations, and patterns of speech.^[3]

History

"Chicano" refers to a person of Mexican descent in North America, compared to "Latino", which can refer to people with cultural ties to Latin America more broadly. Cultural roots are important to Chicanos, many of whom celebrate historical practices such as "Day of the Dead." Chicanos were often forced to adopt a dual culture structure in the 20th century, where they learn to speak English and adapt to US culture, but are still heavily influenced by their Mexican culture. They have been targeted racially since 1848 and often responded by not being called "brown" in history when being "White" was dominant.^[3]

Some scholars argue that the origins of Chicano literature can be traced to the sixteenth century, starting with the chronicle written by Spanish adventurer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who published an account in 1542 of his long journey in what is now the US Southwest, where he lived with various indigenous groups, learning their language and customs.^[4] Literary critics Harold Augenbraum and Margarite Fernández Olmos argue that Cabeza de Vaca's "metamorphosis into a being neither European nor Indian, a cultural hybrid created by the American experience, converts the explorer into a symbolic precursor of the Chicano/a".^[5] Scholar Lee Dowling adds that Inca Garcilaso de la Vega also contributed to early Chicano literature with his expeditionary work "La Florida.^[6]

Chicano literature (and, more generally, the Chicano identity) is usually viewed as starting after the Mexican–American War and the subsequent 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.^[7] In the treaty, Mexico ceded over half of its territory, the now US Southwest, including California, Nevada, Utah, and much of Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, to the US. Tens of thousands of former Mexican citizens became US citizens.^[8] Literary critic Ramón Saldívar points out, "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] This change in legal status was not immediately accompanied by a change in culture or language. Over time, however, these Mexican-Americans or Chicanos developed a unique culture that belonged fully neither to the US nor to Mexico. In Saldívar's words, "Mexican-American culture after 1848 developed in the social interstices between Mexican and American cultural spheres, making that new cultural life patently a product of both but also different in decisive ways from each."^[9] The Chicano culture, as expressed in literature as well as other cultural practices, has been further shaped by migrations of Mexicans to the USA throughout the proceeding centuries.

Literature has often faced gender gaps historically, and Chicano literature similarly recorded more men writing than women.{{Citation needed|date=March 2019}} "Machismo", a sense of overt masculinity, is often cited as part of the reason that Chicana voices have historically been silenced. During El Movimiento, in which Chicanos were fighting for social and civil rights in the United States, a number of Chicana writers began to write as they formed an important part of the movement.

^[10] By 1900, according to critic Raymund Paredes, "Mexican American literature had emerged as a distinctive part of the literary culture of the United States."^[11] Paredes highlights the significance of Josephina Niggli's 1945 novel, Mexican Village, which was "the first literary work by a Mexican American to reach a general American audience."^[11] Chicano literature from many different genres (narrative, poetry, drama) now has a wide popular and critical presence.

Notable Chicano Writers

Jovita Gonzales is a Mexican-American born in Texas who has graduated at the University of Texas with a Masters degree. A couple of books she has written includes Dew on the Thorn, The Women who lost her soul and other stories, Life along the border, and Caballero. Jovita was educated from an early age and was exposed to fictional writing. She grew up with a sense of pride of being Mexican-American which would lead to her dedicating herself to writing about Texas-American stories.

Dew on the Thorn gives the reader a sense of it was for Mexican societies living near the border in the history. In the story, Mexicans being robbed of their land after the Mexican-American war opposed the idea of moving out of Texas as they viewed that area as their home. The idea of losing their homes to people they thought of as strangers caused them to oppose the idea of leaving the land even if Texas had become part of the United States. A common theme to this book was how would an oppressed Mexican society react to being a minority in an American society.

Themes

Chicano literature tends to focus on themes of identity, discrimination, and culture, with an emphasis on validating the Mexican-American culture or Chicano culture in the United States. It is often associated with the social and cultural claims of the Chicano movement. It is a vehicle through which Chicanos express and represent themselves, and also often a voice of social critique and protest.

Other important themes include the experience of migration and living between two languages. Chicano literature may be written in either English or Spanish, or even a combination of the two: Spanglish. Chicano culture has often been politically focused on the question of the border, and the ways in which Chicanos straddle or cross that border.

The contributions of feminists such as Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga have been particularly pronounced over the past couple of decades. Anzaldua particularly brought more attention to viewing the topic of the border in ways beyond physical, with a particular focus on sexual and cultural oppression, while Moraga made significant contributions to addressing queer and lesbian identities among Chicano/a people. {{Citation needed|date=March 2019}}

Dual-cultural identity

Stephanie Elizondo Griest takes a neutral standpoint where she is acting as a third person in her books. She explores what it's like to have a Mexican culture in an American society.^[19] Even though Chicanos are bound to the Mexican culture, it seems as if they are distant from Mexico itself because of the US-Mexico border thus creating a mixture of culture for the people of the region with US culture and Mexican culture.^[20] Mexican culture is known for having a mixture in it. The importance of mixture in the surviving Mexican culture is noted from Mexican Natives. Mexicans living near the border keep their cultural identity because they live close to Mexico despite being blocked by the US-Mexico border. Another factor that helps Mexican culture last in the United States are factors such as people migrating from Mexico to the US and bringing their culture with them and influencing family. Their culture is thought to be assimilated by later generations of immigrants to the US , but younger generations develop an interest in their cultural roots.^[21] People born in the United States to immigrant parents face an assimilation process where they try to adapt to their communities, but still feel like they're considered foreign.^[22]

Border literature

Traveling through the border is becoming an important topic as the population of Mexicans is growing in regions close to the border such as Texas and California. The migration of Mexicans to the U.S. is causing an increase in literature for labor workers and studies of the Mexican-American Culture. The motivational force of Mexicans traveling across the border is viewing it as an opportunity to increase their capital and expand their opportunities.^[23]

Mexican-Americans near the border struggle with their identity because they are mostly considered immigrants though some may be U.S. citizens. Mexicans view crossing the border as an opportunity to improve their living conditions for themselves and their families though they have had a strong bonding to their Mexican nationality and would look at those that became U.S. citizens as traitors.^[24] Before the 1930s there wasn't any Mexican-American literature, Mexicans would stay in their homes and not seek the U.S. as an escape, but after U.S.-Mexican war they saw themselves as being denied their civil rights while having U.S. citizenship. Mexicans after the U.S.-Mexican war found themselves receiving a much lower pay than White labor disregarding their skill level in a work environment.^[25]

Chica lit

In 2003 author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez published The Dirty Girls Social Club, a chick lit novel aimed at Latina women. Valdes-Rodriguez was dubbed the godmother of Chica Lit by Seattle Times magazine.^[26] Unlike other works of Chicano literature, Chica Lit targeted middle-class women like Valdes-Rodriguez, who described herself as "an Ivy League graduate, middle-class person who just lives a regular American life—you know, born and raised here, don't speak all that much Spanish".^[26]

Major figures

Major figures in Chicano literature include Sabine R. Ulibarri, Rudolfo Anaya, Américo Paredes, Rodolfo Gonzales, Rafael C. Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, 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, Rolando Hinojosa, Luis J. Rodriguez, Rudy Ruiz and Alicia Gaspar de Alba. María Ruiz de Burton was the first female Mexican-American author to write in English around 1872. Literature on Chicano history can be found in Occupied America, by Rodolfo Acuña, which offers an alternative perspective of history from the Chicano point of view. Felipe de Ortego y Gasca offers an alternative perspective on Chicano literature in Backgrounds of Mexican-American Literature, first study in the field of Mexican-American/Chicano literary history (University of New Mexico, 1971).

Notes

1. ^{{Harvnb|Calderón|Saldívar|1991|p= 7}}
2. ^{{Cite web|url=https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/the-life-and-times-of-pio-pico-last-governor-of-mexican-california|title=The Life and Times of Pío Pico, Last Governor of Mexican California|last=Estrada|first=William|date=2016-10-27|website=KCET|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=2017-06-06}}
3. ^Blea, Irene I. U.S. Chicanas and Latinas within a Global Context: Women of Color at the Fourth World Womens Conference. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997.
4. ^Critic Luis Leal comments, "you can go as far back as explorer Cabeza de Vaca, who wrote about his adventures in Texas in the sixteenth century". Qtd. in {{Harvnb|García|2000|p= 112}}
5. ^{{Harvnb|Augernbraum|Fernández Olmos|p= xv}}
6. ^{{Harvnb|Dowling|2006|p=139}}
7. ^Allatson, Paul. "Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo", in Key Terms in Latino/a Cultural and Literary Studies, Malden, Massachusetts, and Oxford, Blackwell press, 2007, p. 234
8. ^{{cite journal | last1 = Nostrand | first1 = Richard L. | year = 1975 | title = Mexican-Americans Circa 1850 | url = | journal = Annals of the Association of American Geographers | volume = 65 | issue = 3| pages = 378–390 | doi = 10.1111/j.1467-8306.1975.tb01046.x }}
9. ^¹{{Harvnb|Saldívar|1990|p= 13}}
10. ^Jacobs, Elizabeth. 2009. Mexican American Literature: the Politics of Identity. London: Routledge.
11. ^¹²{{Harvnb|Paredes|1995}}
12. ^{{Cite news|url=http://stephanieelizondogriest.com/about/|title=About Stephanie - STEPHANiE ELiZONDO GRiEST|work=STEPHANiE ELiZONDO GRiEST|access-date=2018-11-05|language=en-US}}
13. ^Maria Antonia Oliver-Rotger. "Travel, Autoethnography, and “Cultural Schizophrenia” in Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s Mexican Enough." Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 18, no. 1 (2016): 112-129. https://muse.jhu.edu/.
14. ^{{Cite web|url=http://stephanieelizondogriest.com/portfolio/mexican-enough/|title=Mexican Enough|website=STEPHANiE ELiZONDO GRiEST|language=en-US|access-date=2019-02-19}}
15. ^“Mexican Enough.” Kirkus Reviews, vol. 76, no. 11, June 2008, p. 80. EBSCOhost,
16. ^López Sam. 2012. Post-Revolutionary Chicana Literature: Memoir, Folklore, and Fiction of the Border, 1900-1950. New York: Routledge.
17. ^López Sam. 2012. Post-Revolutionary Chicana Literature: Memoir, Folklore, and Fiction of the Border, 1900-1950. New York: Routledge.
18. ^González-T., César A. "Luis Alberto Urrea." In Chicano Writers: Third Series, edited by Francisco A. Lomeli and Carl R. Shirley. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 209. Detroit, MI: Gale, 1999. Literature Resource Center
19. ^{{Cite journal|last=Oliver-Rotger|first=Maria Antonia|date=2016-03-02|title=Travel, Autoethnography and "Cultural Schizophrenia" in Stephanie Elizondo Griest's Mexican Enough|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/611221|journal=Interdisciplinary Literary Studies|language=en|volume=18|issue=1|pages=112–129|issn=2161-427X}}
20. ^Gutiérrez-Witt, Laura. "United States-Mexico Border Studies and "BorderLine"." Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 6, no. 1 (1990): 121-31. doi:10.2307/1052008.
21. ^Borderless Borders U.S. Latinos, Latins Americans, and the Paradox of Interdependence. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.
22. ^Falconer, Blas, and Lorraine M. López. The Other Latin@: Writing against a Singular Identity. Tucson, Ariz: University of Arizona Press, 2011.
23. ^Cantú, Norma E., and María E. Fránquiz. Inside the Latin@ Experience: A Latin@ Studies Reader. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
24. ^Stavans, Ilan. Border Culture. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2010.
25. ^González, John Morán. Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican-American Literature. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2011.
26. ^¹Kerry Lengel, "Chica lit" fills a niche for Latinas, The Arizona Republic.

Definition and Dynamics