Panel: Self-Representation in Chicana/o and U.S.-Mexico Border
Literature
Copanelists: Javier Duran and Carlos Gallego
In his 1993 seminal work My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American Autobiography, critic Genaro Padilla states:
Traditional genre constraints have been exclusionary and must be renegotiated, wedged open to alternate forms of self-representation—historiography, cultural ethnography, folkloristic narratives—that do not focus exclusively on the development of individual personality so much as on the formation, and transformation, of the individual within a community. (30)
Padilla’s comments reflect not only an emergent analytical basis for Mexican American autobiography, but also reveal a series of evolving trends in Chicana/o and US-Mexico border life writings developed over the last fifteen years. This panel aims to undertake a close look at these trends and frame them under current discussions on autobiography and life writing studies.
Driven by the imperative to represent the collective experience of their community through narrations of their own individual lives, Latina/o authors in general, and Chicana/o authors in particular, often superimpose the private and the public in their texts. Their autobiographical works will thus often be a confluence of accounts of personal dramas and accounts of the collective whole struggling with questions of place, agency, determinancy, identity, etc.
In this presentation, I will briefly discuss a wide range of contemporary autobiographical works by Chicanas/os writers within a matrix of socio-historical conditions that informs a very complex web of social, political, and cultural dynamics in which this underserved population is situated. In addition to discussing some “coded” themes in Chicana/o life writing, such as growing up in the urban barrio; war on the home front and abroad; the diverse expressions of self-identity; and artistic expression as a vehicle of self-redemption, I will introduce newer topics that have problematized these writings, including the varied experiences of immigration and life along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Charles Tatum is Professor of Spanish and Dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona. He has published several monographic studies on Mexican and Chicana/o literature and popular culture, and has edited several anthologies of Chicana/o literature. Tatum is co-founder and senior co-editor of the journal Studies in Latin American Popular Culture. His current research focuses on Chicana/o autobiography.