Chapter 13 - “Here’s to Chicanos in the Middle Class!”

Summary

This chapter explains why the topic of Mexican American culture became especially urgent during the 1960s and 1970s, and shows why this emphasis on culture came under question during the 1980s. Arellano describes how the Chicano literary intervention was crucial for exposing reductive caricatures by providing more nuanced characterizations of Mexican Americans. This focus on nuanced characterization, however, ultimately risked obfuscating the damaging effects of class struggle. Referencing the competing visions of Tomás Rivera and Richard Rodriguez, concerning the value of culture, Arellano analyzes literary case studies by José Antonio Villarreal and Arturo Islas, showing how their emphasis on a shared ethnic identity occluded class inequality. Arellano concludes by analyzing Rolando Hinojosa’s novel We Happy Few, which reconsiders the legacy of Chicano activism, demonstrating how Hinojosa disarticulates the novel’s meaning from cultural unity and reconnects it to the needs of workers. The novel thus highlights a view of literature that takes Mexican American humanity as a given and directs readers’ critical attention toward the problems that arise from a society organized by class