Originally published in 1928, and written by journalist Daniel Venegas, Las aventuras de Don Chipote is an unknown classic of American literature, dealing with the phenomenon that has made this nation great: immigration. It is the bittersweet tale of a greenhorn who abandons his plot of land (and a shack full of children) in Mexico to come to the United States and sweep the gold up from the streets. Together with his faithful companions, a tramp named Policarpo and a dog called Skinenbones. Don Chipote (whose name means "bump on the head") stumbles from one misadventure to another. Along the way, we learn what the Southwest was like during the 1920s: how Mexican laborers were treated like beasts of burden, and how they became targets for every shyster and lowlife looking to make a quick buck. The author, himself a former immigrant laborer, spins his tale using the Chicano vernacular of the time. Full of folklore and local color, Don Chipote is a must-read for scholars, students, and all who would become acquainted with the historical and economic roots, as well as with the humor, of the Southwestern Hispanic community. Ethriam Cash Brammer, a young poet and scholar, provides a faithful English translation, while Dr. Nicolás Kanellos offers an accessible, well-documented introduction to this important novel in 1984.

The hapless journey of the poor farmer Don Chipote de Jesús Maria Domínguez, who naively leaves behind his wife and children in Mexico to seek riches in the United States--where, he is assured, one can sweep up gold dust off the streets and "suck the nectar from the tree of life."

A major anthology of Hispanic writing in the U.S., ranging from the early Spanish explorers to the present day.

This book explores the cultural and historical imaginary expressed in literary works that emphasize Latina/o world views. The essays here employ critical approaches based on discourse and cultural analyses that highlight individual and collective identity. They encompass a wide spectrum of topics that deal with border newspapers published early in the twentieth century and their function as a forum for conserving memory based on cultural values and religious beliefs; life writing and fictional rewritings of memory; autobiographical texts that emphasize the diasporic experience of immigrants; and the essay and the poetic/visual literary forms that recover border memory. The discussion of alternative life views presented here will be of interest to academics involved in the recovery of print culture and genre specialists in the area of autobiography, as well as readers who wish to become more familiar with literature from the US-Mexico border region.

The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature emphasizes the importance of understanding Latina/o literature not simply as a US ethnic phenomenon but more broadly as an important element of a trans-American literary imagination. Engaging with the dynamics of migration, linguistic and cultural translation, and the uneven distribution of resources across the Americas that characterize Latina/o literature, the essays in this History provide a critical overview of key texts, authors, themes, and contexts as discussed by leading scholars in the field. This book demonstrates the relevance of Latina/o literature for a world defined by the migration of people, commodities, and cultural expressions.

Ideas defer to no border—least of all the idea of belonging. So where does one belong, and what does belonging even mean, when a border inscribes one’s identity? This dilemma, so critical to the ethnic Mexican community, is at the heart of Homeland, an intellectual, cultural, and literary history of belonging in ethnic Mexican thought through the twentieth century. Belonging, as Aaron E. Sánchez’s sees it, is an interwoven collection of ideas that defines human connectedness and that shapes the contours of human responsibilities and our obligations to one another. In Homeland, Sánchez traces these ideas of belonging to their global, national, and local origins, and shows how they have transformed over time. For pragmatic, ideological, and political reasons, ethnic Mexicans have adapted, adopted, and abandoned ideas about belonging as shifting conceptions of citizenship disrupted old and new ways of thinking about roots and shared identity around the global. From the Mexican Revolution to the Chicano Movement, in Texas and across the nation, journalists, poets, lawyers, labor activists, and people from all walks of life have reworked or rejected citizenship as a concept that explained the responsibilities of people to the state and to one another. A wealth of sources—poems, plays, protests, editorials, and manifestos—demonstrate how ethnic Mexicans responded to changes in the legitimate means of belonging in the twentieth century. With competing ideas from both sides of the border they expressed how they viewed their position in the region, the nation, and the world—in ways that sometimes united and often divided the community. A transnational history that reveals how ideas move across borders and between communities, Homeland offers welcome insight into the defining and changing concept of belonging in relation to citizenship. In the process, the book marks another step in a promising new direction for Mexican American intellectual history.

Presents a collection of critical essays analyzing modern Hispanic American writers including Junot Diaz, Pat Mora, and Rudolfo Anaya.