Chicano Poetics: Heterotexts and Hybridities examines the crossing of literary and social forces - be they linguistic, political, poetic - that forms the context for being Chicano. It reveals how a poetry of the cross can influence identity, in readings ranging from the poetry of gender and race by Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz to that of the fragmentary, postmodern subject of Juan Felipe Herrara. How the text of Spanish and Indian miscegenation and the story of Aztln propagate identity is demonstrated in texts from Bernal Diaz del Castillo to Gloria Anzalda. The international space and the interlingual language of the borderlands are read as factors of nationalism and postcoloniality in discussion ranging from cowboy lingo to the essential Mexicanism of Octavio Paz. Heterotextuality is the medium in which xicanismo is articulated and comes to be a hybrid subject of textual difference.

As our millennium draws to a close, we find ourselves in the midst of great and rapid global changes with nations and political systems dissolving all around us and the world becoming one of shifting identities--of peoples unified and divided by such distinctions as nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, and colonial status. The articulation and construction of these distinctions, the very language of difference, is the subject of An Other Tongue. This collection of essays by a group of distinguished scholars, including Norma Alarcón, Gayatri Spivak, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gerald Vizenor, explores the interconnections between language and identity. The Chicanos, the U.S./Mexico borderland polyglots whose sense of history, nationality, and race is as mixed as their language, are the book's prime example. But the authors recognize that border zones, like diasporas and post-colonial relations, occur globally, and their discussion of hybrid or mestizo identities ranges from the United States to the Caribbean to South Asia to Ireland. Drawing on personal experience, readings of poetry and fiction, and cultural theory, the authors detail the politics of being human through the mediation of language. What does "shadow" mean to the Native American Indian, or diaspora to the East Indian immigrant? How does British colonialism yet affect Irish and Indian nationalist literary production? Why is the split between Eastern and Western European language use necessarily schizophrenic? So much of our sense of difference today is constructed as we speak, and An Other Tongue speaks with eloquence to this phenomenon and will be of great interest to those concerned with the discourse of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and the remapping of world literature. Contributors. Norma Alarcón, Alfred Arteaga, Juan Bruce-Novoa, Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Michael G. Cooke, Edmundo Desnoes, Eugene C. Eoyang, David Lloyd, Lydie Moudileno, Jean-Luc Nancy, Tejaswini Niranjana, Ada Savin, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Michael Smith, Tzvetan Todorov, Luis A. Torres, Gerald Vizenor

Interpreting specific poems by some of the best known Chicano writers, this book studies the central aesthetic and thematic concerns recent Chicano poetry addresses. Drawing on current theories of postmodernity and postcoloniality, it places a 'minority' literature within the central concerns of contemporary literary and cultural studies. The book addresses the most important issues related to Chicano identity, especially focusing on the contribution women writers and thinkers have made in articulating this identity. The study will thus be of interest to scholars specialising in feminist, cultural as well as Chicano/a studies.

“Candelaria's first book of criticism is a welcome addition to a field that has previously been limited to two other books, Bruce Novoa's Chicano Poetry: A Response to Chaos and Marta Sanchez's Contemporary Chicano Poetry: A Critical Approach to an Emerging Literature. Although selected poems of Lorna Dee Cervantes, Alberto Rios, Gary Soto, Bernice Zamora, and others are discussed, the book focuses on the familiar poets of the early period of the Chicano literary movement of the 60s, Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez, Abelardo Delgado, Ricardo Sanchez, Alurista, and Raul Salinas. For the novice, the book provides a selected bibliography and a brief, four-page index of names and subjects ... as a research tool this book meets the needs of faculty and graduate students as well as those of undergraduates and the general reader concerned with American poetry.”– Choice