Mexican and Chicano Literature in Chicago: Transplanting Early Roots to the Barrios and Beyond

by Marc Zimmerman

“Zimmerman demonstrates his notable gifts as a writer keenly sensitive to the vital literary, socio-cultural and ethno-communal nuances his book explores and illuminates." Roberto Márquez, William Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Mount Holyoke College. Author of The Poet’s Prose.and Other Essays.

"The range of writers is impressive; Zimmerman’s documenting this epoch in the Midwest is monumental.” Armando Rendón, author of Chicano Manifesto and founder of the Somos en Escrito Literary Foundation.

This book traces the development of Chicago Mexican and Chicano literature from its clouded beginnings to and beyond the Chicago Latino cultural explosion of the 1970s. Author Marc Zimmerman tells how talented and determined Mexican writers spread out from their southside ports-of-entry barrios to more diverse and cosmopolitan northside locales, forging a regional ethnic literature as part of a broader cultural and political movement. The story told provides a rich tapestry showing how these writers portrayed Mexican and Latino Chicago in ways which broadened and deepened the Chicano, Latino, minority, and overall literary field.

Part One applies theoretical and historical perspectives to early Chicago Mexican writing. Part Two studies stories portraying Mexican Chicago’s steel mill world. Part Three examines the movement north by Mexican poets identifying as Chicano in the 1970s and 80s. Parts Four and Five center on Chicago’s most famous writers, Ana Castillo and Sandra Cisneros, who take off toward the wider world. An epilogue surveys the many other writers emerging during and after the Latino explosion and leading to the vital contribution of Chicago Chicano and Mexican writing to Latino and U.S. literature.

Marc Zimmerman has authored and edited over forty books on world, Latin and Central American, Caribbean and U.S. Chicano and Puerto Rican cultures and literatures, Latino. transnational and urban processes, as well as Chicago Mexican life and art. Zimmerman is currently writing autofictions about his Chicago Latino experiences. Founder/director of LACASA Chicago, he is emeritus professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the U. of Illinois-Chicago, and Hispanic and World Literatures at the U. of Houston.