Decolonial Voices: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century

The interdisciplinary essays in Decolonial Voices discuss racialized, subaltern, feminist, and diasporic identities and the aesthetic politics of hybrid and mestiza/o cultural productions. This collection represents several key directions in the field: First, it charts how subaltern cultural productions of the US/ Mexico borderlands speak to the intersections of "local," "hemispheric," and "globalized" power relations of the border imaginary. Second, it recovers the Mexican women's and Chicana literary and cultural heritages that have been ignored by Euro-American canons and patriarchal exclusionary practices. It also expands the field in postnationalist directions by creating an interethnic, comparative, and transnational dialogue between Chicana and Chicano, African American, Mexican feminist, and U.S. Native American cultural vocabularies.

Contributors include Norma Alarcón, Arturo J. Aldama, Frederick Luis Aldama, Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Alejandra Elenes, Ramón Garcia, María Herrera-Sobek, Patricia Penn Hilden, Gaye T. M. Johnson, Alberto Ledesma, Pancho McFarland, Amelia María de la Luz Montes, Laura Elisa Pérez, Naomi Quiñonez, Sarah Ramirez, Rolando J. Romero, Delberto Dario Ruiz, Vicki Ruiz, José David Saldívar, Anna Sandoval, and Jonathan Xavier Inda.

Aldama (Arizona State Univ.) and Quiñones (Quinones) (California State Univ., Fullerton) have assembled a remarkable range of essays on topics ranging from dresses and body art, film, popular music (including Chicano rap), and literary works to race, nationalism, and gender. The situation of undocumented workers gets full attention. The collection is especially strong on Chicana issues, redressing the male-centered atmosphere of the early Chicano movement. The level of the writing is high, though a few of the essays are sodden with jargon. The editors provide no overall bibliography, but most of the essays have lengthy bibliographies of their own. The index is unusually detailed, which is very helpful with a wide-ranging collection like this one. The use of illustrations where needed, as in the treatment of film and body art, is a bonus. This essential work cuts across disciplinary boundaries and illuminates many aspects of contemporary Chicana/o life. The work closest to it in spirit is Criticism in the Borderlands, ed. by Héctor (Hector) Calderón (Calderon) and José (Jose) David Saldívar (Saldivar) (CH, Jun'92), though Decolonial Voices gives more attention to popular culture. All collections.B. Almon, University of Alberta, Choice, November 2002 Indiana University Press Indiana University Press

"Aldama (Arizona State Univ.) and Quiñones (California State Univ., Fullerton) have assembled a remarkable range of essays on topics ranging from dresses and body art, film, popular music (including Chicano rap), and literary works to race, nationalism, and gender.... This essential work cuts across disciplinary boundaries and illuminates many aspects of contemporary Chicana/o life." --Choice, November 2002 Indiana University Press

Arturo J. Aldama is Associate Professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at Arizona State University. He is the author of Disrupting Savagism:Intersecting Chicana/o, Mexicana/o and Native American Struggles for Representation and several articles on Chicana/o and Native American cultural, literary and filmic studies. He is also Director elect for the Chicana and Chicano literary studies executive committee of the Modern Language Association.

Naomi Quiñonez is Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at Cal State Fullerton. She is a widely anthologized poet and the author of Hummingbird Dreams/ Sueño de Colibri; The Smoking Mirror (1998); the editor of Invocation L.A.: Urban Multicultural Poetry. Her scholarly work appears in several anthologies and special issues of top refereed journals.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword by María Herrera-Sobek

Introduction: Peligro! Subversive Subjects: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century." Arturo J. Aldama and Naomi Quiñonez.

PART I: DANGEROUS BODIES

1. Arturo J. Aldama, "Borders, Violence and the Struggles for Chicana/o Subjectivity."

2. Laura Pérez, "Dresses and Body Decoration in Contemporary Chicana Art."

3. Ramón Garcia, "New Iconographies: Film Culture in Chicano Cultural Production."

4. Frederick Luis Aldama, "New Millennia Chicano/a Bodies in Edward J. Olmos' American Me."

5. Jonathan Xavier Inda, "Biopower, Reproduction, and the Migrant Woman's Body."

6. Norma Alarcón, "Anzaldúa's Frontera: Inscribing Gynetics."

PART II: DISMANTLING COLONIAL/ PATRIARCHAL LEGACIES

7. Naomi Quiñonez, "Hijas de La Malinche: Re-Writing Postcolonial Discourse Through the

Literature of First Wave Chicana Writers."

8. Patricia Penn Hilden, "How the Border Lies: Some Historical Reflections."

9. Amelia María de la Luz Montes, "How I am Received": Nationalism, Race and Gender in

Who Would Have Thought It?"

10. Cordelia Candelaria, "Engendering Re/Solutions: The (Feminist) Legacy of Estela Portillo Trambley (1926-1998)."

11. Anna Sandoval, "Unir Los Lazos: Toward a Comparative Study of Chicana and Mexicana

Literature."

12. Sarah Ramirez, "Borders, Feminism and Spirituality: Movements in Chicana Artistic Revisioning."

PART III: MAPPING SPACE AND RECLAIMING PLACE

13. Alejandra Elenes, "Border/Transformative Pedagogies at the End of the Millennium: Chicana/o Cultural Studies and Education."

14. José David Saldívar, "On the Bad Edge of La Frontera."

15. Pancho McFarland, "'Here is Something You Can't Understand': Chicano Rap and the Critique of Globalization."

16. Gaye T. M Johnson, "A Sifting of Centuries: Afro-Chicana/o Interaction and Popular Musical Culture."

17. Alberto Ledesma, "Chicana/o Undocumented Immigrant Narratives as Acts of Political and Intellectual Responsibility."

18. Delberto Dario Ruiz, "Teki Lenguas del Yollotzin (Cut Tongues From the Heart): Colonial Impositions, Hegemonic Borders and Shifting Spaces."

19. Rolando J. Romero. "The Alamo, Slavery and the Politics of Memory."

20. Vicki Ruiz, "Color Coding: Reflections at the Millennium."

Contributors

Index