Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Research in Social Sciences and Humanities
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Disconnected Literatures, A Comparative Study Of Chicano And Irish Literatures
Álvaro Gutiérrez-Valladares
ABSTRACT:
The common conception of both the Irish and the Mexican-American population in the middle half of the XXth century as an essentially conservative, deeply Catholic peoples exists in clear tension with the literary output of Irish and Chicano writers. This tend to be either more ambivalent in their identification with the values of the broader community, or directly opposed to them. This sense of disconnected literature which at once identifies with the group from which it is written and a liberal or even revolutionary ideology which holds more in common with their perceived oppressors (a liberal Anglo-protestant power) bears closer examination from a political-anthropological postcolonial and literary perspective. This parallel tension at times tacit and at others explicit is at once a source of literary complexity in both literatures and a window into the broader process of conforming a hybrid identity in a culturally, politically and religiously complex human community.
keywords: identity; Mexican-american; post-colonial literature; religion