Description
In his books The Great Plains, The Great Frontier, and The Texas Rangers, historian Walter Prescott Webb created an enduring image of fearless, white, Anglo male settlers and lawmen bringing civilization to an American Southwest plagued with "savage" Indians and Mexicans. So popular was Webb's vision that it influenced generations of historians and artists in all media and effectively silenced the counter-narratives that Mexican American writers and historians were concurrently producing to claim their standing as "gente decente," people of worth.
These counter-narratives form the subject of Leticia M. Garza-Falcón's study. She explores how prominent writers of Mexican descent-such as Jovita González, Américo Paredes, María Cristina Mena, Fermina Guerra, Beatriz de la Garza, and Helena María Viramontes -have used literature to respond to the dominative history of the United States, which offered retrospective justification for expansionist policies in the Southwest and South Texas. Garza-Falcón shows how these counter-narratives capture a body of knowledge and experience excluded from "official" histories, whose "facts" often emerged more from literary techniques than from objective analysis of historical data.
Author: Leticia Magda Garza-Falcón
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 05/01/1998
Pages: 327
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.16lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.06w x 0.83d
ISBN13: 9780292728073
ISBN10: 0292728077
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | American | Hispanic & Latino
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | General
About the Author
Leticia Magda Garza-Falcón has taught at several universities and now works as an independent scholar.