Chicano or Chicana is an ethnic identity for Mexican Americans that emerged from the Chicano Movement. Chicano was originally a classist and racist slur used toward low-income Mexicans that was reclaimed in the 1940s among youth who belonged to the Pachuco and Pachuca subculture.
PatMora is an American poet and author of books for adults, teens and children. A native of El Paso, Texas, her grandparents came to the city from northern Mexico. She graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso, received Honorary Doctorates from North Carolina State University and SUNY Buffalo, and was awarded American Library Association Honorary Membership. A literacy advocate, in 1996, she founded Children's Day, Book Day , now celebrated across the country each year on April 30.
John Francisco Rechy is a Mexican-American novelist and essayist. His novels are written extensively about gay culture in Los Angeles and wider America, among other subject matter. City of Night, his debut novel published in 1963, was a best seller. Drawing on his own background, he has contributed to Mexican-American literature, notably with his novel The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez, which has been taught in several Chicano studies courses throughout the United States. But, even after the success of his first novel, he still worked as a prostitute, teaching during the day, and hustling at night. He worked as a prostitute into his forties while also teaching at UCLA. Through the 1970's and 1980's he dealt with personal drug use, as well as the AIDS crisis, which killed many of his friends.
Ana Castillo is a Chicana novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scholar. Considered one of the leading voices in Chicana experience, Castillo is most known for her experimental style as a Latina novelist and for her intervention in Chicana feminism known as Xicanisma.
Norma Elia Cantú is a Chicana postmodernist writer and the Murchison Professor in the Humanities at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Mexican American literature is literature written by Mexican Americans in the United States. Although its origins can be traced back to the sixteenth century, the bulk of Mexican American literature dates from post-1848 and the United States annexation of large parts of Mexico in the wake of the Mexican–American War. Today, as a part of American literature in general, this genre includes a vibrant and diverse set of narratives, prompting critics to describe it as providing "a new awareness of the historical and cultural independence of both northern and southern American hemispheres". Chicano literature is an aspect of Mexican American literature.
Roberta Fernández is a Tejana novelist, scholar, critic and arts advocate. She is known for her novel Intaglio and for her work editing several award-winning women writers. She was a professor in Romance languages & literatures and women's studies at the University of Georgia.
Diane Rodriguez was an American theatre artist who directed, wrote and performed. An OBIE Award winning actress, she was known for using comedy to confront various forms of oppression, often with special attention to issues of gender and sexuality.
Alejandro Morales is a Mexican-American writer of fiction and poetry. He is an Emeritus Professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He has published seven novels, three novellas, and one collection of poetry.
Alma Luz Villanueva is an American poet, short story writer, and novelist.
Graciela Limón is a Latina/Chicana novelist and a former university professor. She has been honored with an American Book Award and the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature.
The Premio Aztlán Literary Prize is a national literary award for emerging Chicana and Chicano authors, founded in 1993 by Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya. The award was originally sponsored by the University of New Mexico, but was moved in 2008 to the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
Hispanic and Latino women in America have been involved in journalism for years, using their multilingual skills to reach across cultures and spread news throughout the 19th century until the common era. Hispanic presses provided information important to the Hispanic and Latin American communities and helped to foster and preserve the cultural values that remain today. These presses also "promoted education, provided special-interest columns, and often founded magazines, publishing houses, and bookstores to disseminate the ideas of local and external writers."
Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders is a 2005 mystery thriller by author Alicia Gaspar de Alba based on the violence, kidnapping and femicides that occurred in Ciudad Juarez in 1998.
This is a Mexican American bibliography. This list consists of books, and journal articles, about Mexican Americans, Chicanos, and their history and culture. The list includes works of literature whose subject matter is significantly about Mexican Americans and the Chicano/a experience. This list does not include works by Mexican American writers which do not address the topic, such as science texts by Mexican American writers.
Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation was a traveling exhibit of Chicano/a artists which toured the United States from 1990 through 1993. CARA visited ten major cities and featured over 128 individual works by about 180 different Chicano/a artists. The show was also intended to visit Madrid and Mexico City. CARA was the first time a Chicano exhibit received major attention from the press and it was the first exhibit that collaborated between Chicanos and major museums in the U.S. The show was considered a "notable event in the development of Chicano art." Another unique feature of CARA was the "extensive planning" that attempted to be as inclusive as possible and which took place more than five years prior to the opening at Wight Art Gallery.
Estela Portillo-Trambley was a Chicana poet and playwright. She gained recognition through the publishing of her many plays, prose, and poetry depicting the lives and plight of Chicana women in male-dominated societies.
Lucha Corpi is a Chicana poet and mystery writer. She was born on April 13, 1945, in Jaltipan, Veracruz, Mexico. In 1975, she earned a B.A. degree in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1979, she earned an M.A. in comparative literature from San Francisco State University. Corpi's most important contribution to Chicano literature, a series of four poems called "The Marina Poems", appeared in the anthology The Other Voice: Twentieth-Century Women's Poetry in Translation, which was published by W. W. Norton & Company, in 1976 (ISBN 9780393044218).
Emma Pérez is an American author and professor, known for her work in queer Chicana feminist studies.
