Américo Paredes : culture and critique /

An elder statesman of and luminary in Mexican American studies, Limon (Univ. of Notre Dame) here provides a long-awaited, book-length contribution to Paredes studies, joining most recently Manual Medrano's Americo Paredes: In His Own Words, an Authorized Biography (CH, Nov'10, 48-1330), Ramon Saldivar's The Borderlands of Culture (CH, Dec'06, 44-1996), and Jose Lopez Morin's The Legacy of Americo Paredes (CH, Apr'07, 44-4329). Limon intimates in the introduction that Paredes studies has perhaps reached a "plateau." However, as this book illustrates, analysis, debate, and rethinking of Paredes are still in order, not only to fill lacunae in the critical corpus but also to address what Limon, via the late Juan Bruce-Novoa (another luminary), calls the uncritical reverence of Paredes's work. Limon is in the privileged position of having known and studied with Paredes; even so, this relationship does not result in problematic bias. In fact, part of Limon's enterprise is to apply a closer, more critical lens to Paredes's work and his life as a public intellectual. Limon's methodology is unique, vis-a-vis related work, because along the way he delivers critical observations about the fields of folklore, cultural studies, and ethnography. Summing Up: Highly recommended: Upper-division undergraduates. graduate students; collections specializing in Chicano and US/Mexican border studies. K. L. Cole University of Sioux Falls