Chicano Satire: A Study in Literary Culture (MEXICAN AMERICAN MONOGRAPHS) - Hardcover

Hernandez, Guillermo

9780292711235: Chicano Satire: A Study in Literary Culture (MEXICAN AMERICAN MONOGRAPHS)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0292711239 ISBN 13: 9780292711235

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 1991

Geographically close to Mexico, but surrounded by Anglo-American culture in the United States, Chicanos experience many cultural tensions and contradictions. Their lifeways are no longer identical with Mexican norms, nor are they fully assimilated to Anglo-American patterns. Coping with these tensions—knowing how much to let go of, how much to keep—is a common concern of Chicano writers, who frequently use satire as a means of testing norms and deviations from acceptable community standards. In this groundbreaking study, Guillermo Hern�ndez focuses on the uses of satire in the works of three authors—Luis Valdez, Rolando Hinojosa, and Jos� Montoya—and on the larger context of Chicano culture in which satire operates.

Hern�ndez looks specifically at the figures of the pocho (the assimilated Chicano) and the pachuco (the zoot-suiter, or urbanized youth). He shows how changes in their literary treatment—from simple ridicule to more understanding and respect—reflect the culture's changes in attitude toward the process of assimilation.

Hern�ndez also offers many important insights into the process of cultural definition that engaged Chicano writers during the 1960s and 1970s. He shows how the writers imaginatively and syncretically formed new norms for the Chicano experience, based on elements from both Mexican and United States culture but congruent with the historical reality of Chicanos.

With its emphasis on culture change and creation, Chicano Satire will be of interest across a range of human sciences.

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About the Author:

Guillermo Hern�ndez (1940–2006) was Professor of Spanish at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Review:

"Writing in a jargon-free style, and approaching his subject with a keen interest in original research and practical inquiry, [Hernandez] argues for the emergence of comedy and satire as important modes by which Chicano writers have recommended and celebrated community standards that are distinctly Chicano—'distinct' because belonging to a people with a unique identity and past, and because these values comprise a creative synthesis of Mexican and Anglo cultural norms." (Modern Language Notes)

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