Limit this search to....

The Places of Modernity in Early Mexican American Literature, 1848-1948
Contributor(s): Aranda, José F. (Author)
ISBN: 1496224132     ISBN-13: 9781496224132
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
OUR PRICE:   $98.01  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: February 2022
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | American - Hispanic American
Dewey: 810.986
LCCN: 2021013953
Physical Information: 0.81" H x 6" W x 9" (1.31 lbs) 288 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher 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.