Aztlán 22, no. 2 fall 1997                                                                     Next Issue    Previous Issue

Editor’s Introduction: Retorno a Aztlán

Editor’s Commentary: Imagined Communication

•Essays

Refiguring Aztlán
Rafael Pérez-Torres

The Culture of Poverty as Relajo
Miguel Díaz Barriga

Latinas in Medicine: Stressors, Survival Skills, and Strengths
Cindy A. Grijalva and Robert Holman Coombs

A Home in the Heart: Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street
Nicholas Sloboda

Into the Labyrinth: Chicano Literature in Search of a Theory
Luis Leal

•Dossier: Identity Surfing

Chicana Identity Matters
Deena González

Subterranean Homesick Blues
Max Benavidez

Latino Performance and Identity
David Román

Patssi’s Eyes
Ramón García

Jennifer’s Butt
Frances Negrón-Muntaner

•Artist’s Communiqué

Phantoms in Urban Exile
Harry Gamboa Jr.

•Homenaje

The Humanity of the Art of José Antonio Burciaga
Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez

Contributors

Editor's Introduction

     This issue returns Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies to an open submission format. Needless to say, there has been a lot of support along the way in bringing the journal back “on line” as a regularly published forum for interdisciplinary scholarship in Chicano studies. The previous two special issues, guest edited by Raymund Paredes and Guillermo Hernández, were especially instrumental.
      In my first year as editor, I felt that it was important to expand the editorial board in order to reflect the diversity of Chicano studies, whether in terms of object of study, critical methodology, discipline, or, that most vexing issue of all, identity. But I have also tried to look beyond “Chicano” proper toward other critical locations that either inform or could stand to be informed by that multivalent thing we do in Chicano studies. In other words, how can our work engage in a dialogue with the critical practices of other Latino groups, other racial and ethnic groups, women and sexual minorities, and the so-called national community, not to mention the unspoken category of whiteness? Or, for that matter, how can our work participate in the other disciplinary locations that steadfastly do not take Chicanos et al. into account?
      I realize that is a tall order, but, in many ways, these goals have been at the core of Chicano studies since the start. The field has struggled with its own interdisciplinarity—notably, the divide between social sciences and the humanities—while it has also walked a tightrope between a distinct identity (i.e., becoming institutionalized within the university) and an ongoing effort to supplement, integrate, reform, deconstruct, or re-imagine the grand narratives of other disciplines (i.e., torecast existing departments). Naturally, both approaches are necessary, but they also lead in different directions. In either case, it’s one thing to postulate all-embracing connections with other “minorities” and other disciplines, but it’s quite another thing to begin speaking and listening from a location that can allow those connections to become real and acquire critical mass.
      I have taken a few steps toward opening up the journal to such critical dialogues. It is my humble belief that interdisciplinarity begins at home, especially after one invites the neighbors over for a chat—or chisme, as the case might be. Thus, this issue inaugurates two new regular sections: a critics’ dossier and an artist’s communiqué. In the former, diverse writers and academics respond to a common topic, thus providing a range of disciplinary perspectives. These essays are shorter, more polemical, and are designed to stimulate a critical dialogue. In this issue, the dossier on “Identity Surfing” includes essays that approach identity politics from various fields: history, visual and cultural studies, public intellectual discourse, and performance studies. Two essays venture outside “Chicano” to consider Puerto Rican and other Latino issues. For example, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, a veritable Puerto Rican renaissance woman (filmmaker, songwriter, poet, scholar, and salsera), “queers” Jennifer Lopez’s butt—made famous in Selena—in the name of Puerto Rican nationalism. In the artist’s communiqué, the journal provides a forum for an artist to address our mostly academic readership in a way that is different from his or her own art. The communiqué will be urgent, unpredictable, and, perhaps, unruly, reflecting the necessary messiness of establishing communication between artist and academic.
      But is it art?
      You decide.
      Then let us know what you think. The new sections—and the old ones, too—are meant not just to represent critical debates, but also to stimulate dialogue, whether in the form of a written commentary or of another essay altogether. The journal continues to be a forum for new and innovative work in (and around) Chicano studies. As such, we look forward to hearing from you!
Chon A. Noriega, Editor