Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez

This collection of both deeply personal reflections and carefully researched studies explores the New Mexico homeland through the experiences and perspectives of Chicanx and indigenous/Genízaro writers and scholars from across the state.

Colonial Legacies in Chicana/o Literature and Culture traces the development of Chicana/o literature and cultural production from the Spanish colonial period to the present. In doing so, it challenges us to look critically at how we simultaneously embody colonial constructs and challenge their legacies.

Celebrating more than forty years of creative writing by Chicana author Margarita Cota-Cárdenas, this volume includes critical essays, reflections, interviews, and previously unpublished writing by the author herself to document the lifelong craft and legacy of a pioneering writer in the field.

This volume’s essays analyze her work’s themes of Chicana identity, the Chicanx movement, and the sociopolitical climate of Arizona and the larger U.S.-Mexico border region, as well as issues of gender, sexuality, and identity related to the Chicanx experience over time.
 

This collection highlights how meXicana scholars center their community-engaged research to reflect on important regional themes in the U.S. Southwest and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Divided into five sections, authors explore what it means to cultivate spaces of belonging, navigate language policies, and excavate silences in various spaces, among other important themes, with a particular emphasis on Arizona in each section.