English 100

Other Readings and Media

Among the narratives we will read are, for New Mexico, selections from Historia de la Nueva Mexico (Perez de Villagra,1610), �Pastorelas� plays, Fray Angelico Chavez�s Short Stories, Anaya�s Bless Me, Ultima, Castillo�s So Far From God, Baca�s Martin and Meditations on the South Valley, and Denise Chavez�s Loving Pedro Infante; for California, selections from Ruiz de Burton�s The Squatter and the Don, Morales� The Brick People, Villarreal�s Pocho, Viramonte�s Under the Feet of Jesus, and essays from Richard Rodriguez, Cherrie Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldua.

Description

"This course will study the historical and ideological formation of Chicano narrative in two regions. Chicano narrative in New Mexico is suffused with the iconography of Spanish colonial history, religious imagery and ritual, open and communal space ruptured by American encroachment, and by nostalgia for the loss of traditional cultural practices. California narrative also expresses chagrin at the loss of land possession after the American invasion of 1846, but very soon after 1900 turns to narrative about Mexican immigrant presence, labor exploitation, urban experience, and, often, longing for Mexico rather than an earlier California.



The major theoretical and critical method here will be to historicize our readings; to that end I will also assign some historical overviews, literary history, and some literary criticism that studies the formations of Chicano narrative"