PREFACE

Since the manuscript for the first edition of this text was completed, countless new works of and about U.S. Latino literature have appeared. The list of recent publications is a remarkable one, including major novels and poetry collections, as well as pathbreaking theoretically-driven critical texts, as integral to a spurt of cultural production that raises fundamental questions about the overall field and its concep-tualization. Among the new theory-oriented works are Juan Bruce-Novoa's RetroSpace, Ramón Saldívar's Chicano Narrative, Juan Flores's Divided Borders, and the state-of-the-art collection, Héctor Calderón and José David Saldívar's Criticism in the Borderlands. In addition, a first "cultural studies"-oriented collection, Angie Chabram and Rosalinda Fregoso's Chicana/o Cultural Representations: Reframing Critical Discourses has appeared; and so has a new, feminist crossover text of theory and creativity, The Sexuality of Latinas, (see Part VIII the Annotations for details on these books). Even putting aside the latter collection, it should be noted that all the new works mentioned here are significantly inflected by feminist theory; furthermore, sufficient se-lections from theoretical works in progress, as well as a number of significant feminist creative works, have appeared to point toward the weighty contribution of Latina feminism to reconstructing Latino literary theory. And, it should be noted as well, that many creative works by midwest and specifically Chicago-origin or residence writers have ap-peared in this brief period to contribute to our reconceptualizing efforts. In addition to this internal configuration, a whole range of polemics have come center stage--debates over U.S. and Latin American literary canons (as well as their possible inter-relatedness under the rubric of "New World Writing," etc.); over "political correctness" and "multi-culturalism" or "multicultural literacy"; over possibilities of "literary difference," "resistance" and "subaltern voice"; over the "transformative difference within difference" constituted by feminist and homosexual texts. These controversial questions, in the midst of the overall effort of mapping contemporary, postmodern culture, have brought at least certain works and indeed the entire field of U.S. Latino literature to a level of recognized significance that they had never before achieved.

To be sure, Chicano literature, as a large, creatively developing ensemble, has dominated the Latino critical debate and threatened to colonize and distort perspectives with respect to not only non-Chicano Latino texts but even Chicano or mexicano ones that, for regional or other reasons, do not quite fit the Southwest-centered models. Flores's book, and also Elías Miguel Muñoz's Desde ésta orilla, enable us to project points of Puerto Rican and Cuban similarity and difference. The appearance of exploratory fiction works by Chicanas like Ana Castillo and Sandra Cisneros, along with the first U.S. Puerto Rican women's novels other than those by Nicholasa Mohr (novels by Judith Ortiz Cofer and Carole Fernández), as well as the appearance also of the first major Latina works of fiction by a Cuban, Cristina García and (the most remarkable breakthrough) a Dominican, Julia Alvarez, provide bases for projecting a broader view of the Latino field. And what might The Mambo Kings, or recent texts by John Rechy and Isabel Allende tell us about overall Latina/o questions?

There may well be at least a problematic distortion in using such terms as "Chicano" or "Latino"--which may designate not a "people," as the romantic subtitle of this book's first edition suggests, but, rather, very diverse groups with such regionally inflected origins and situations, such class, generational and contextual differentiations, etc., that the unifying designation may seem more a creation of a non-Latino professor or a hoped for, rather than necessarily existent, response to Anglo hegemony.

This new edition at least partially reflects the advanced state of Chicano literature and Latino literature as a whole in their inter-connection with contemporary theory. The revised introduction to our text attempts to address some of the questions mentioned above, including those relating to Latino cultural identity as the context for the literary works; it also touches on the way in which the recent theoretical and creative works change our way of conceiving the literary corpus, and how that corpus has been extended by new feminist, new non-Chicano/Puerto Rican/Cuban works; the introduction hints at how the growing Chicago and other midwestern contributions seem to point toward further reconceptualizations of the field. This is not to claim that the revised essay is now the "last word" on its subject. Rather, the new perspectives are only lightly registered, while the annotations themselves involve descriptions of works and theorizations which require elucidation beyond what time and circumstances permitted here. As the book appears, perhaps Norma Alarcón, Angie Chabram, Ro-saura Sánchez, Sonia Saldívar-Hull or other leading Chicana feminist critics will publish their long-awaited volumes that will further transform the field. Perhaps Juan Flores's contribution will create a context for a Puerto Rican feminist breakthrough; and perhaps Ellen McCracken, Eliana Rivero or other critics will write trans-Latina studies that will make this present book even more inadequate than it presently is. And of course we may expect creative experimentation to go beyond theory and demand its further reformulation.

All of these caveats stated, I still maintain that the introduction and the book as a whole will be valuable for many readers wishing some initial orientation to this fascinating and expanding field. I only hope that readers will find this text of use and that it will stir many to explore at least some of the works described.

The bibliography itself was specifically designed for new readers of Latino literature. It is not complete, nor is meant to be; but I have tried to include most of the major works, or at least one or more represen-tative works, by each of the more important or successful writers. Other than representativity, my criteria in selection have been based on overlapping and sometimes contradictory considerations of language, subject matter and orientation. Thus, I have distinguished between Mexican texts on Chicano life, immigration, etc., and Chicano texts dealing with Mexican life, excluding the former and including the latter. In like manner (though the problem is more difficult and I have some-times been inconsistent), I have chosen Nuyoricans writing about San Juan over island writers writing about New York. In some cases, such as René Marqués's La Carreta (The Oxcart), I have violated my own criteria because of the great importance of the work in question for immigration literature, and also because the work, deeply ingrained in indigenous Puerto Rican discourse, has been translated. On the other hand, with a parallel case in Mexican literature, Los Desarraigados, a play dealing very negatively with Chicanos, seen as uprooted Mexicans, or pochos, I have excluded the work, because it seems to have had little impact on Chicano literature and it has not been translated.

Clearly preference has been given to Englishlanguage texts or Spanish texts that have been translated. But questions of Spanish or English are not so important as the kinds of Spanish and English. An educated Puerto Rican may write a standard English in translation, but it is not necessarily a New Yorkacculturated discourse. Even if the English conforms to New York norms, the Spanish may not do so. As in language, so in subject matter or orientation to it (from an island point of view, almost everything in New York is negative). My incli- nation (though not law) has been to chose the U.S.tending worksthe ones that may represent U.S. ethnic literature, even if ultimately they represent a veering from ethnicity back to older roots or toward total mainstreaming and assimilation. On this basis, I have excluded many works by Puerto Rican university professors living in the U.S., to the degree that they have quite successfully maintained their relation to the island's and thereby more broadly Caribbean and Latin American lit-erary production (cf. the discussion in my introduction below). On the other hand, I have included professor-writer Luz Umpierre, while I have excluded a fine writer like Rosario Ferré. Perhaps Bruce-Novoa's pressure to extend the literary paradigm and a local pressure to include Chicago writers have led me to include works by Sheila Ortiz Taylor, Cecile Piñeda and Laurence Gonzales. But there are other mainstream-tending works that I perhaps should have included, but could not finally get myself to include, even though I might have suspected them of being more subtly "ethnic" than others that did make the list.

This question of criteria involves almost insoluble complexities; and they pertain perhaps most significantly to Cuban and other non-Mexican and non-Puerto Rican writers as they emerge in the U.S. My rule with the Cubans was to include mainly those U.S.based writers focused more on the immigrant experience than on questions of Cuban history, Fidel Castro and the like. On the one hand, I certainly felt an obligation to include several entries of an abundant and growing literature. But, on the other hand, the force of U.S. Cuban pre-occupations with the island and middle class pursuits might have led to excluding many writers and works. My unhappy compromise was to focus on those writers who were clearly part of a U.S./Cuban Continental world as opposed to a more strictly island one in style, language, subject matter or orientation.

The issue of criteria for volumes such as this will only become more complex as years go by, with increasing numbers of Latin Americans from various countries now living in the U.S., and with many more Chicano, Puerto Rican and Dominican writers with middle and upperclass backgrounds, as well as advanced literary educations. In this regard, this edition, like the first, still attempts to toe the line, and maintain a concern with ethnic minority and working class orien-tations--even though I make a kind of transitional concession in the section listed as Part V of the Annotations, perhaps in recognition of the quixotic nature of an effort to maintain an episteme at least inflected by a concern with class and class struggle.

In addition to my own opinions and perceptions, I have drawn on many sources for my listings and descriptions, having had recourse to most of the major books and articles written about Latino literature. The most important sources for my Chicano annotations were Roberto G. Trujillo and Andrés Rodríguez, Literatura Chicana: Creative and Critical Writings through 1984 (Encino, CA: Floricanto Press, 1985); Carl R. Shirley and Paula W. Shirley, Understanding Chicano Liter-ature (Columbia, South Carolina: U. of South Carolina Press, 1988); Virginia Ramos Foster, "Literature," in David William Foster, ed., Sourcebook of Hispanic Culture in the United States (Chicago: Amer-ican Library Association, 1982, pp. 86111); and several numbers of Lector, a publication dealing with "Mexican American" writers.

For Puerto Rican materials, the main sources drawn on are Edna AcostaBelén, "The Literature of the Puerto Rican Migration in the United States," in ADE Bulletin, no. 91 (Winter, 1988), pp. 5662; and David William Foster, ed. U.S. Puerto Rican Literature A Bibliography of Secondary Sources (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1983). For addi-tional Puerto Rican perspectives, as well as notes on U.S. Cuban literature, I drew on Naomi E. Lindstrom, "Cuban and Continental Puerto Rican Literature," in Foster, ed., Sourcebook of Hispanic Culture, pp. 22145. I also availed myself of the catalogue des-criptions of Arte Público Press (APP), Bilingual Review Press (BRP) and Waterfront Press for succinct summaries and blurbs based on cri-tical reviews from a variety of sources. I had frequent recourse to the two leading Latino literary/cultural journals, Américas Review (for-merly, Revista ChicanoRiqueña) and The Bilingual Review.

For this edition, Carlos Cumpián and Cynthia Gallaher of the MARCH Research Collective suggested books and helped draft some entries (indicated by MRC); also, in some instances I have included recent texts which I knew to be important but which I could not secure or examine by deadline time (indicated by NR, for Not Reviewed). In the last analysis, however, I am responsible for the selection, the ordering, the bibliographical data and comments.

I have generally chosen to list books in relation to their most recent and available edition, often indicating the year of original publication in the body of my note; and I have chosen to order the works by a given author chronologically rather than alphabetically so that the author's development might more readily emerge.

Thanks to Carlos Cumpián and MARCH for their overall support in seeing to the publication of the book. Thanks to Pilar Medina, José Garza and UIC Latin American Studies students Scott Curry, José Can-delas and Francisco Arcaute for their research help. Thanks to Mario Widel and Patricio Navia for help with computerrelated problems. Thanks to Ellen McCracken for her last-minute CARE package, and finally to Frank Pettis, Mary Ellen Quinn, and Esther Soler for their support and vision.

Marc Zimmerman, Chicago

12/17/91