In the Spirit of a New People The Cultural Politics of the Chicano Movement [Hardcover]

Reexamining the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, In the Spirit of a New People brings to light new insights about social activism in the twentieth-century and new lessons for progressive politics in the twenty-first. Randy J. Ontiveros explores the ways in which Chicano/a artists and activists used fiction, poetry, visual arts, theater, and other expressive forms to forge a common purpose and to challenge inequality in America.

 

Focusing on cultural politics, Ontiveros reveals neglected stories about the Chicano movement and its impact: how writers used the street press to push back against the network news; how visual artists such as Santa Barraza used painting, installations, and mixed media to challenge racism in mainstream environmentalism; how El Teatro Campesino’s innovative “actos,” or short skits,sought to embody new, more inclusive forms of citizenship; and how Sandra Cisneros and other Chicana novelists broadened the narrative of the Chicano movement. In the Spirit of a New People articulates a fresh understanding of how the Chicano movement contributed to the social and political currents of postwar America, and how the movement remains meaningful today.

Acknowledgments

 Introduction: The Art and History of the Chicano Movement 

1 Antennas and Mimeograph Machines: Postwar Mass Media and the Chicano/a Street Press 

2 Green Aztlán: Environmentalism and the Chicano/a Visual Arts 

3 Immigrant Actos: Citizenship and Performance in El Teatro Campesino 

4 After Words: Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo and the Evolution of Chicano/a Cultural Politics 

Notes 

Index