The Art of Literary Trope L’oeil and the Craft of Literary Imagination: Patricia Chao’s Mambo Peligroso
Abstract
Chicano literary critics Francisco Lomelí, María Teresa Márquez, and María Herrera-Sobek maintain that Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, and other Latina/o writers “have forged what is considered to be a second Latina/o literary boom. This renaissance is now part of a multicultural forum in which Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, Chicanos/as, and other Latinos are creating a significant corpus of literary writings” 295 . According to these scholars, Latina/o authors in the 1990s produced work which involved “greater interethnic cross-fertilization, a Latin Americanization or ‘tropicalization’ in themes, a definite diversity in terms of experiential perspectives,…an experimentation with forms…, thereby producing a vital unpredictability and a hybrid freshness never before witnessed” 295 . In Show and Tell Karen Christian also marvels at “a ‘boom’ of U.S. Latina/o cultural production“ in the last decades 4 .
References
- Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza [1987]. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999.
- Bernal, Martha E. and George P. Knight. “Introduction.” In Ethnic Identity: Formation and Transmission among Hispanics and Other Minorities. Eds. Martha E. Bernal and George P. Knight. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993. 1-7.
- Chao, Patricia. Mambo Peligroso. New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2005.
- Christian, Karen. “Sexual Stereotypes and Ethnic Pastiche in Cuban-American Fiction.“ In Gender, Self, and Society: Proceedings of the IV International Conference on the Hispanic Cultures of the United States. Ed. Renate von Bardeleben. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993. 171-189.
- ___. Show and Tell: Identity as Performance in U.S. Latina/o Fiction. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.
- Eysturoy, Annie O. Daughters of Self-Creation: The Contemporary Chicana Novel. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
- García, Cristina, ed. ¡Cubanísimo! The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature. New York: Vintage Books, 2002.
- Heyck, Denis L., ed. Barrios and Borderlands: Cultures of Latinos and Latinas in the UnitedStates. New York, London: Routledge, 1994.
- Hollinger, David A. Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism [1995]. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
- Hye Suh, Seung and Robert Ji-Song Ku. “The New Immigration and the Literature of Asian America.” In Crossings into America: The New Literature of Immigration. eds. Louis Mendoza and S.Shankar. New York, London: The New Press, 2003. 314-326.