Race Class - Reading Mexican American Literature in Era of Neoliberalism, 1981

Race Class identifies two competing aesthetics, the 'recognitional' and the 'redistributive,' that developed in Mexican American literature during the 1980s. Recognitional literature seeks to express an ethnic identity via a circular narratological discourse of self-creation. This expressive view of literature fosters readerly sympathy via testimony and textual personification, the author argues, but ultimately forecloses interpretive judgement. Redistributive literature instead averts the readers' sympathy to produce the evaluative distance through which interpretative judgement and structural critique are enabled. By tracking these competing aesthetics, Race Class shows why the Chicano Movement should not be understood as a working-class enterprise, why higher education cannot be a mechanism of social justice, and why the left continues to misunderstand the nature of economic inequality today.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. The Development of Chicano Literature and Culture; 3. The Limits of the Chicano Solution; 4. A Critique of Chicano Activism and Literature: Richard Rodriguez Hunger of Memory (1982); 5. Recognitional Witnessing versus Redistributive Representation: I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983); 6. Identifying the Enemy: Daniel James Famous All Over Town (1983); 7. Recognitional Novels: Arturo Islas The Rain God (1984); 8. The Culture of Poverty and the Program Era: Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street (1984); 9. Against Literature? The Redistributive within The House on Mango Street; 10. Conclusion.

Product details

• Authors: José Antonio Arellano, Jose Antonio (United States Air Force Ac Arellano
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 31.12.2025
• EAN: 9781009532938
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0953293-8
• No. of pages: 75
• Series: Elements in Race in American Literature and Culture
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; History, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, Social groups, Literary theory, Hispanic & Latino Studies, Social groups, communities and identities, Relating to Latin / Hispanic US American people, Literature of the United States of America (USA)