Mestizaje: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780816645954)

Focusing on the often unrecognized role race plays in expressions of Chicano culture, Mestizaje is a provocative exploration of the volatility and mutability of racial identities. In this important moment in Chicano studies, Rafael P駻ez-Torres reveals how the concepts and realities of race, historical memory, the body, and community have both constrained and opened possibilities for forging new and potentially liberating multiracial identities.

Informed by a broad-ranging theoretical investigation of identity politics and race and incorporating feminist and queer critiques, P駻ez-Torres skillfully analyzes Chicano cultural production. Contextualizing the history of mestizaje, he shows how the concept of mixed race has been used to engage issues of hybridity and voice and examines the dynamics that make mestizo and mestiza identities resistant to, as well as affirmative of, dominant forms of power. He also addresses the role that mestizaje has played in expressive culture, including the hip-hop music of Cypress Hill and the vibrancy of Chicano poster art. Turning to issues of mestizaje in literary creation, P駻ez-Torres offers critical readings of the works of Emma P駻ez, Gil Cuadros, and Sandra Cisneros, among others. This book concludes with a consideration of the role that the mestizo body plays as a site of elusive or displaced knowledge.

Moving beyond the oppositions--nationalism versus assimilation, men versus women, Texans versus Californians--that have characterized much of Chicano studies, Mestizaje synthesizes and assesses twenty-five years of pathbreaking thinking to make a case for the core components, sensibilities, and concerns of the discipline.

Rafael P駻ez-Torres is professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of Movements in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, Against Margins, coauthor of To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back: Memories of an East LA Outlaw, and coeditor of The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztl疣, 1970-2000.

Author: Rafael Perez-Torres
ISBN-10: 0816645957
ISBN-13: 9780816645954
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Language: English
Published: 12/01/2005
Pages: 312
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.91lbs
Size: 9.02h x 6.30w x 0.66d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2006 pg. 76
Multicultural Review 12/01/2006 pg. 76