Review by Choice Review
Sae-Saue (Southern Methodist Univ.) analyzes several texts in the Chicana/o literary canon through a new lens: he critiques "the underexamined relations between Mexican Americans, Asia, and Asian Americans" (as he writes in the introduction). Tracing the marginalized presence of Asians and Asian Americans as characters in Chicana/o writing, the author reveals how early Chicana/o writings expressed political ambivalence in connection with interracial and transpacific concerns. However, the Chicano movement pushed attention toward the margin, thus demonstrating that Atzlán (the legendary ancestral home of the Aztec peoples) strove to coalesce numerous philosophies, cultures, and histories, and that these could also include Southwest Asia. Sae-Saue examines Luis Valedez's antiwar play Vietnam Campesino (1970), Rolando Hinojosa's Korean Love Songs (1978), Rudolfo Anaya's A Chicano in China (1986), and Virginia Grise's Rasgos asiáticos (2011) in order to demonstrate commonalities between the Chicana/o and Asian Other. Sae-Saue suggests that these groups are not as divorced as other critiques of borderlands culture insist, and he highlights fascinating cross-racial imaginations that legitimize a broader definition of the Atzlán diaspora. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Shelli Lynn Rottschafer, Aquinas College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
