Description
In The Places of Modernity in Early Mexican American Literature, 1848-1948, José F. Aranda Jr. describes the first one hundred years of Mexican American literature. He argues for the importance of interrogating the concept of modernity in light of what has emerged as a canon of earlier pre-1968 Mexican American literature. In order to understand modernity for diverse communities of Mexican Americans, he contends, one must see it as an apprehension, both symbolic and material, of one settler colonial world order giving way to another more powerful colonialist but imperial vision of North America.
Letters, folklore, print culture, and literary production demonstrate how a new Anglo-American political imaginary revised and realigned centuries-old discourses on race, gender, class, religion, citizenship, power, and sovereignty. The "modern," Aranda argues, makes itself visible in cultural productions being foisted on a "conquered people," who were themselves beneficiaries of a notion of the modern that began in 1492. For Mexican Americans, modernity is less about any particular angst over global imperial designs or cultures of capitalism and more about becoming the subordinates of a nation-building project that ushers the United States into the twentieth century.
José F. Aranda Jr. is a professor of Chicanx and American literature at Rice University. He is the author of When We Arrive: A Literary History of Mexican America.
Author: José F. Aranda
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 02/01/2022
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.31lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.81d
ISBN13: 9781496224132
ISBN10: 1496224132
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | American | Hispanic & Latino
About the Author
José F. Aranda Jr. is a professor of Chicanx and American literature at Rice University. He is the author of When We Arrive: A Literary History of Mexican America.