Ethnic and Racial Studies

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Ethnic identity and Chicano literature: How
ethnicity affects reading and reading affects ethnic
consciousness

Jessica M. Vasquez

To cite this article: Jessica M. Vasquez (2005) Ethnic identity and Chicano literature: How
ethnicity affects reading and reading affects ethnic consciousness, Ethnic and Racial Studies,
28:5, 903-924, DOI: 10.1080/01419870500158927

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Ethnic identity and Chicano literature:

How ethnicity affects reading and

reading affects ethnic consciousness

Jessica M. Vasquez

Abstract

This article interrogates the impact of readers’ ethnicity (Latino and non-
Latino) on meanings crafted from Chicano literature. This article
addresses the effect of Chicano literature on ethnic identity and world-
view formation. The data source is participant observation and interviews
with eighteen students in a college-level Chicano literature seminar in the
United States. Latino students found that the literature spoke to their
experience as Latinos, inciting a sense of membership in a community
that merits inclusion in a college course. This connection with the
literature transmuted into ethnic validation for nearly all Latino students.
Non-Latinos, hindered from relating to the course content on an ethnic
level, discovered alternate entryways into the texts that allowed for
identification on other particular levels. Non-Latinos ascertained how
ethnic distinctions partially shape human experience and that this
understanding is critical to cross-cultural appreciation and empathy.
Non-Latinos additionally perceived that a common humanity tunnels
beneath ethnic difference.

Keywords: Latino; Chicano; identity; education; literature; multiculturalism.

‘You read a book and you are engaged in a life and story that isn’t
yours but that you are sharing for two-hundred-fifty pages and in doing
so you kind of privilege the subject. You give the subject privilege in
your life for however long it takes you to read it. And, just like [when]
you watch a film, you see something projected in this enormous size
and it takes center stage in your imagination and that does a lot for
them.’

Rafael, Chicano student in the Chicano Narrative class

Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 28 No. 5 September 2005 pp. 903�/924

# 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
ISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 online
DOI: 10.1080/01419870500158927



Introduction and literature review

This article examines the impact of readers’ racial and ethnic back-
grounds in their experience of Chicano literature in an English
literature college classroom in California, as well as how this literature
affects readers’ self concept, consciousness, and worldview. The
fictions and realities of race and ethnicity1 excavated in a multicultural
education classroom2 impact minority and non-minority students’
understandings of themselves and the world around them. My
research asks, primarily, how readers’ ethnicity mediates textual
interpretation. Secondly, this research analyses how exposure to ethnic
literature or ‘subjugated knowledges’ (Collins 1991) impacts on
readers.

Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron (1977; 1979) propound a
theory of social reproduction that casts the educational system in the
role of chief reproducer of the extant social hierarchy. Bourdieu and
Passeron contend that students from privileged classes find their
attitudes, tastes, and behaviours validated by the teachers, curriculum,
and educational system at large, leaving non-privileged students to be
cast aside or forced to play cultural catch-up. High status students find
legitimation of, and academic rewards for, their knowledge and
lifestyles. To the extent that race and class are often inextricably
bound up with each other, it is the echelon of upper-class students
from the dominant racial group whose cultural knowledge is validated
by the school system. Thus, students hailing from non-dominant
classes (economically, culturally, and racially) find themselves excluded
or marginalized on campus in much the same way as their commu-
nities are devalued in society (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; 1979;
Giroux 1981; Lareau and Horvat 1999; Cummins 2001). Michael
Apple (1996) agrees that educational institutions possess a tremendous
capacity to perpetuate a stilted economic, social, and cultural
hierarchy:

Education is deeply implicated in the politics of culture. The
curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge,
somehow appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. It is
always part of a selective tradition [.] . . . [T]he decision to define
some groups’ knowledge as the most legitimate, as official knowl-
edge, while other groups’ knowledge hardly sees the light of day, says
something extremely important about who has power in society.
(Apple 1996, p. 22)

Other contemporary scholars of race and education consider how
school practices affect youths’ sense of their racial and ethnic
backgrounds (Davidson 1996), as well as how the politics of teaching

904 Jessica M. Vasquez



and the ethos of caring subtract cultural resources from minority
students, institutionalizing ‘social de-capitalization’ (Valenzuela 1999).
Furthermore, a statistically significant positive correlation exists
between structural, classroom, and interactional diversity on college
campuses and both learning outcomes (intelligent engagement and
growth in academic skills) and democracy outcomes (civic engagement
and living racially and ethnically integrated lives) (Gurin 2002).

Literary theory is germane to the discussion of how race contributes
to readers’ meaning-making processes. There is a long-standing debate
on whether the nexus between literature and the creation of meaning
lies embedded within the reader or is inherent within the text.
Reception theory argues that ‘interpretation is not the art of
construing but the art of constructing’ (Fish 1980, p. 327). Reader-
response theory concedes the ‘dynamic character’ of a text as well as
the social location of the individual reader: texts offer stimuli that are
secured and responded to by readers in a two-way process (Iser 1978,
p. 107). Reading possesses the potential for self-discovery: ‘[W]ith
every text we learn not only about what we are reading but also about
ourselves’ (Iser 1989, p. 29). Texts are multivocal. Meaning is not
inherent in texts but, rather, constructed or ‘fabricated’ by the
interaction of audiences with a social context and presuppositions
and the cultural object (Griswold 1987). Further, reading can provide a
‘compensatory function’, providing readers with emotional sustenance
(Radway 1984), and can yield consciousness-raising benefits (Stake
and Hoffman 2001). Literature is a vehicle for mental and emotional
travel which can produce learning, understanding, and even solidarity.
Putting subordinated standpoints in conversation through literary
consumption (‘connective politics’) may allow readers to see an
overlap that can be turned into solidarity (Gwin 1996).

This literature leaves questions open for exploration: What is the
effect of ethnic literature on personal and ethnic identity formation,
for both minority and non-minority readers? Conversely, how does the
ethnicity of a reader impact on the interpretation of text? I hypothesize
that a reader approaches a text with a pre-existing personal and
cultural background, training, mentality, and ‘period eye’ (Baxandall
1972), and that this ‘interpretive backdrop’ is the equipment used to
build further meaning from pre-existing nascent textual meaning. I
follow Pierre Bourdieu’s notion that cultural competence colours
perception of a cultural object: ‘one can say that the capacity to see
(voir) is a function of . . . knowledge (savoir)’ (Bourdieu 1984, p. 2). I
postulate that the racial and ethnic background of a reader helps to
shape artistic valuation and literary interpretation in systematically
patterned ways.

Ethnic identity and Chicano literature 905



Research site and methodology

In the spring semester of 2001, I was a participant observer in the
Chicano Narrative senior seminar in the English Department of the
University of California, Berkeley. I situated myself in the Chicano
Narrative class precisely because I wanted to hear reactions, from
Latinos and non-Latinos, to the writings of a subordinated United
States literary population. Ethnic and cultural studies programmes
were inserted into the educational system because they were presumed
to have counter-hegemonic effects, and so my study is an investigation
of a particular empirical case. I specifically selected a class devoted to
ethnic literature because I felt it was paramount to observe students
read ‘‘‘forgotten’’ histories’ (Maher and Tetreault 1994, p. 216) and
become witness to struggles over power, representation and muted
voices of history. I conducted participant observation throughout the
semester, sitting as a silent observer during the three-hour seminar that
met once a week. The course materials, including books, corridos
(ballads), poetry and short stories, dated from 1832 to the present.3 All
readings were authored by Chicanos, and dealt with topics such as
immigration, acculturation, assimilation, migrant labour, poverty,
urban oppositional environments, Catholicism, patriarchy/machismo,
and Chicana feminism.

The significance of the book list is that it provided historical and
contemporary visions of Mexican and Mexican American (or Chi-
cano4) experiences in the United States, a segment of the population
that, while substantial in California and the Southwest, is not awarded
much attention in educational curriculum. Classroom discussions paid
attention to what both aesthetics and content divulged about Chicano
social history and the political, economic and social positioning of
Chicanos vis-à-vis Mexicans and European-origin Americans. I read
the required book assignments along with the class and after the
conclusion of the term interviewed eighteen volunteers from the class
(out of twenty-three students).5 For the sake of analysis, I created two
ethnic categories, Latino and non-Latino:6 the ‘Latino’ category
includes Chicano, Latino, and half-Latino half-Other, while the
‘non-Latino’ category includes Asian American, European American,
and African American.

Like all social science research, my project relied upon the voluntary
participation of respondents. This project has two potential sources of
selection bias: the first is that all students elected to take the Chicano
Narrative class and the second is that all research participants were
volunteers. The students applied to be in the class, selecting it out of
a list of thirteen senior seminars. As noted below, the students
possessed varying rationales for selecting the class,7 this internal
variety tempering the critique of selection bias. Regarding the

906 Jessica M. Vasquez



potential self-selection bias that is concomitant with ethical research
designs, I would add that over three-quarters of the students in the
class participated, making it unlikely for me only to hear aberrant
opinions. Given this high degree of participation, and the range of
responses voiced, I am confident that my sample did not eclipse any
major faction of student opinion. Prior to commencing each interview,
I attempted to mitigate social desirability bias by underscoring my
desire to hear honest reactions.

Findings on Latinos

A cultural unveiling: ‘Filling in’ history and increasing pride

Through a process of cultural mirroring, the Latino students identified
on an ethnic level with the Chicano texts of the senior seminar. To
varying degrees, all Latino students felt identification with the texts
due to similar life circumstances that they saw depicted (such as
Catholicism, patriarchy, traditions, food); some even went so far as to
select specific characters who resembled their family members. Most of
the Latino students cited their motivation to apply to the seminar in
Chicano Narrative as ‘relatedness’ to the literature, whereas non-
Latinos pointed to a desire to ‘explore’.

Latino students mentioned that the literature helped to ‘fill in’ the
gaps of their family biographies. The literature assisted them in
‘looking back and contextualizing’ their elders and added a realistic
colour to a little discussed family history. Literature shed light on
Angela’s personal history by illuminating the lives of migrant
labourers enlisted to work on the California railroads. Angela made
the connection between the literature and her own family story:

I don’t know what it’s like to be a migrant worker. My grandfather
came from Mexico to work on the railroad system in California;
that’s how he came here illegally. I never got to talk to him about
it . . . he would never speak about it. Very bitter about those
days . . . . So, hearing these stories through these characters talking
about not having food, having to travel to get to work, that really hit
home to me because it gave me a reality that I had been missing.

The acknowledgement that the text ‘gave [her] a reality that [she] had
been missing’ says that the knowledge a story yields is transferable to
her real life.

Juan, an immigrant from Mexico at the age of twenty, was stunned
by how his natal country’s food was celebrated in the literature, and
this released him from feeling ashamed of his strong Mexican ties and
tastes. Juan changed his perception of himself and his native Mexican

Ethnic identity and Chicano literature 907



culture. I asked whether anything he read for class led him to value or
reassess any of his characteristics or outlooks. He immediately gushed:

I was able to not be ashamed of some of my traits of my culture . . . .
I used to not invite my friends over because they would see the food
that we were eating . . . . There was one time we went out to a
restaurant to eat Mexican food and I thought, ‘‘Wait a minute! We
didn’t have to pay so much for something I could have offered you at
home! But I didn’t know.’’ That shocked me . . . . After reading these
books that those people were presenting themselves for who they are
(emphatic) no matter what that . . . That was life changing . . . . I
also adopted pride . . . . I didn’t know people wanted to eat frijoles
(beans), you know.

Juan’s story was one of the most potent tales of transformation I
heard, for how much more powerful could literature be than to lead to
an epiphany that releases people from shame and reinvest them with
pride?

‘I am not alone’: A sense of community

Many Latinos remarked on being familiar with the ‘cultural tug-of-
war’ related to biculturalism that was depicted in many of the books.
Others referenced poverty, youth gangs, and intermingling Spanish
within the primarily English texts as mechanisms that inspirited a
sense of identification with the texts. This recognition of similarity of
hardships led the Latino students to feel as if they were ‘not alone’ in
their position on the periphery of mainstream society in the United
States.

Manny volunteered the feelings of frustration and the experience of
racism as points of identification with the books:

I remember right after high school my parents asked me to work and
so you go to work . . . . I remember . . . meeting a lot of people who
thought I was less-than-intelligent because I was just a little dark-
skinned Mexican kid*/at the time there was a lot of sun that
summer. Being taken for granted or having those things said to you,
it frustrates you at times.

It helps to know that you are not the only one. It helps to know that
someone else has thought about this and has written it down and
that others are reading it now. It feels like you are maybe not going
through it in vain . . . . It’s comforting.

908 Jessica M. Vasquez



Manny was consoled by the realization that he was not alone in his
trials involving racism. Recognizing his own struggles, questions, and
marginal status in society in the content of a novel led to a comforting
sense of community.

Through relating to the Chicano protagonists in the books, Latino
readers were transported into an imaginary community of fellow
Latinos. Through this reading experience, they discovered that the
structural barriers they had faced thus far in life were not unique to
them as individuals but were part of a larger social problem. Armed
with this knowledge, Latinos recast what were previously considered
personal problems as macro-structural issues. Still, there is texture
within the Latino students as to the social problems with which they
identified: the two immigrants in the class strongly identified with the
woes of transplanting their lives in new national soil while second- and
third-generation Latino students related to the process of accultura-
tion and assimilation which more squarely matched their particular
life experience.

‘Ownership of the literature’ leads to ethnic and personal legitimation

Latino students read the Chicano texts and discovered that Latinos do
in fact have an abundance of cultural capital �/ just not the cultural
capital reified by the United States educational system or the society at
large. The Latino students referred to this overflow of cultural capital
as ‘ownership of the text’, meaning that they were finally the ones with
the inside knowledge, and this flowed into a new-found sense of ethnic
validation.

Nations build ‘cognitive insulation’ (Cerulo 1995, p. 56) in order to
ground their identity and clearly define their exterior limits, and
language is one such marker of cultural territory. Nearly all the
Latinos were Spanish speakers, and thus felt very comfortable with the
code-switching in the texts. Familiarity with this code-switching
technique likely supported their claim to ownership of the texts.
Regardless of Spanish-speaking ability, the respondents believed that
bilingualism expresses a bicultural identity: ‘You’re going to see
Spanish and it’s going to remind you that this text is not an English-
only text . . . it tells the story of maybe a bilingual person or maybe
only Spanish [-speaking person].’ A native language recalls a native
culture, and code-switching expresses a cross-cultural identity. Some
words cannot be translated sufficiently, so there are also technical
advantages of writing, untranslated, precisely the right word to express
yourself, as observed by Estela:

I can still see why certain words are in Spanish and why certain
words are not, because some are just not translatable . . . . Malcriada

Ethnic identity and Chicano literature 909



[bad mannered; literally: poorly raised], that’s something you can’t
translate so you have to use that word. And there’s a whole
connotation with malcriada , [that it is] a really bad insult to call
somebody that because you are not only insulting them, you are
insulting their mother.

The ability to understand Spanish words inserted into a primarily
English text is a way to delineate a linguistic in-group versus out-
group, conjuring up a unique sense of community and ownership.

Latino students did not just uncover a literary community of
characters and plotlines that spoke to their experience and rendered
visible their trials; they also located a literature of which they felt a
valid and valuable part, giving them confidence. ‘Owning the
literature’ for these Latino students meant finally being the insider.
It meant a different quality of inspiration than is lent by mainstream,
non-minority authors. It meant seeing their own ethnic group at the
centre of aesthetic attention and thus, momentarily if not forever,
elevated in value. It meant that as their ethnic group was legitimized
through classes at a major university, so too were they personally
validated.

Estela, a Chicana from Orange County, California, explained what
it meant to her to finally be the insider and see Chicano literature
appreciated as legitimate:

The idea that I can study Chicano literature as a valid course of
study, that was really big for me because that is eventually what I
want to study and teach at a community college: ethnic literature.
That I don’t have to teach Ezra Pound. I adore T.S. Eliot but I relate
to him in a different way than I do to Jimmy Santiago Baca . . . .
But, there is a sense of comfort and there is a sense of familiarity and
home, just home, when I read Chicano literature. I get the joke. I
understand what that means and I know what that is saying in a way
that other people don’t, and I like that.

Rafael, a Chicano from Southern California, explicitly related how a
sense of ownership of the literature validated his own personal
existence. In answer to the question of how the books altered his
perception of the Chicano people, he said:

[Chicano literature] was something that I had a say in. It wasn’t
something [where I had to] go ask someone in my co-op if this
explains their experience. This is something where I could raise my
hand and say, ‘‘no.’’ And it’s funny because one of my tea-
chers . . . taught Bless Me, Ultima , [and] . . . it was then when most
of the Chicano kids in class finally raised their hands and spoke . . . .

910 Jessica M. Vasquez



I don’t think we [Chicanos] have that sense of owning the literature.
We don’t own the literature . . . it doesn’t really reflect where we’ve
come from or what we’ve experienced. So . . . , being able to read
something where the Chicano is the main subject, it’s empowering.
It’s empowering.

Empowerment, here can be interpreted as a renewed sense of ethnic
equality. A Chicano literature course at the university level ‘proves’ its
aesthetic equality with culturally dominant literature. Rafael’s com-
ment that it was only when the instructor of another course taught the
Chicano text Bless Me, Ultima that ‘the Chicano kids in class finally
raised their hands and spoke,’ evinces a sense of personal and group
confidence based on ownership.

While I cannot comment on Latino students’ patterns of participa-
tion in other classes, they did comprise a sizeable portion of the core
group of discussants in the Chicano Narrative class. Pierre Bourdieu’s
theory of how social orientation plays out in a person’s bodily
posturing and vocal presence is valuable in recognizing the importance
of classroom participation. Bourdieu establishes a connection between
how much space and time people occupy as an unconscious signal of
how they perceive their social value:

One’s relationship to the social world and to one’s proper place in it
is never more clearly expressed than in the space and time one feels
entitled to take from others; more precisely, in the space one claims
with one’s body in physical space, through a bearing and gestures
that are self-assured or reserved, expansive or constricted (‘presence’
or ‘insignificance’) and with one’s speech in time, through the
interaction time one appropriates and the self-assured or aggressive,
careless or unconscious way one appropriates it. (Bourdieu 1984, p.
474)

Latinos’ active participation in class discussion can be seen as
expressing their sense of social value. In the context of discussing a
Chicano text, Latinos felt socially valuable, personally justified and
were therefore inclined to claim space and speech.

How does this process of identification, community, and validation
function in the concrete lives of various Latino readers? An abundance
of cultural capital stimulated personal and ethnic validation. Victor,
born in the United States to parents who emigrated from Guatemala,
willingly claimed the label ‘American’ as a result of the Chicano
Narrative class. Previously, he had felt uncomfortable and unwilling to
announce himself as an American */ despite his constitutional
birthright */ because of his family’s immigrant and ethnic status. I

Ethnic identity and Chicano literature 911



asked if the literature affected how he viewed himself, and he decisively
responded:

Definitely. As far as identity, who you are. Before I would say that I
wasn’t sure if I was American, like I could say, ‘I’m American.’ Even
though I served in the [United States] Marines for four years and
put myself in a situation where I could die for this country, I
couldn’t really say, ‘‘OK, I’m American’’ because I didn’t have the
confidence. In the way that Latinos are so marginalized . . . . We are
Americans, and we have to get recognized, and we’re not going to
change.

Victor made a vociferous call for cultural visibility and accommoda-
tion that issued from recognizing his own tenuous (as a minority) and
contradictory (as former U.S. military personnel) position in U.S.
society. For him, the Chicano literature had a formative force in
reworking his emotional understanding and mental commitment
about his place in United States society.

Rafael’s testimony involved desiring for family members to reach a
similar plateau of self-understanding as he did. Author Sandra
Cisneros’s work greatly improved Rafael’s ability to see through
some of the painful part of his history and unearth some of the
buried treasures of his youth. In answer to how he would alter any of
his outlooks after reading the course texts, he said:

Value. Value the experience of it [his life]. By reading it in a work of
literature that describes it, expresses it, so beautifully, which is
House on Mango Street for me, you do come to look back and want
to find the beauty in those smaller things that you didn’t always
appreciate at the moment. One of those things being working-class
culture, poverty, difficulty, having to wear the chanclas [flip-flops,
worn-out shoes used only at home] . . . . It’s kinda funny now, you
look back and you think, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Being able to
remember it and hold on to it makes you a strong person I think.

House on Mango Street illuminated part of Rafael’s history that had
been shrouded by struggle. Rafael’s biography remained unchanged,
but his perspective was rotated to recall memories that were previously
overshadowed. Rafael commented that one of his ‘sisters . . . when
[people] ask her, says she’s Italian. Her last name isn’t even Mexican
any more, she’s married . . . . She’s able to pass’. Rafael wished the
same kind of positive revaluation of family history for his sisters that
he experienced, wanting them ‘to evaluate their experience, to take
pride in how they’ve lived’.

912 Jessica M. Vasquez



Victor’s and Rafael’s testimonies demonstrate ethnic literature’s
potentially potent and direct influence in how a person orders the
world and personal experience. Multicultural curriculum content
encouraged a revaluation of Chicano culture and upwardly adjusted
many Latino students’ sense of group and self-worth.

Findings for non-Latinos

Chicano literature as world-travel8: Reading sameness and difference

Pamela Perry (2002) argues persuasively that being in a school
environment where students consort within a racially and ethnically
diverse population makes white students more racially aware. A
multicultural school environment allows for an understanding of
‘racial others’ as well as a ‘racial self’. Whites are more prone to be
cognizant of race when they are a numerical minority or engage with
people across racial borders (Frankenberg 1993; Lewis 2003). Addi-
tionally, having personal relationships across colour lines makes whites
vulnerable to an experience of ‘rebound racism’ (Frankenberg 1993),
heightening whites’ awareness of commonplace racism against mino-
rities. Personal interaction is crucial to breaking down barriers:

[W]hen youth [in racially and ethnically mixed settings] had
opportunities to interact with one another under conditions of
equal status participation in joint projects, those boundaries became
porous and subordinate to lines of sameness and cross-identifica-
tion. Porous boundaries also allowed students to discuss racial
issues openly and undefensively, hence creating opportunities for
personal growth and deeper understanding of different perspectives
(Perry 2002: p. 67).

My evidence corroborates the notion that cross-cultural learning,
whether the vehicle is course curriculum or personal interaction,
edifies the non-minority population and prompts understanding.

Chicano literature as world-travel for non-Latinos, with the
potential for enlightenment and empathy, was touched upon during
non-Latinos’ near unanimous citation of a desire to ‘explore’ in order
to ‘know about other people’s backgrounds, not just my own’ as a
primary motivation for enrolling in the course. Regarding Spanish
code-switching, non-Latino non-Spanish speakers9 acknowledged
that they were implicitly being educated by being exposed to
the bilingualism that often accompanies biculturalism. Crossing
the cultural-language border was not necessary; merely seeing the
border and acknowledging its significance was enough. Non-Latinos
felt that inclusion of Spanish in the texts lent an overall feeling of

Ethnic identity and Chicano literature 913



‘world-travelling’ (Lugones 1987) and let them peek into a different
culture, not substantially interfering with their comprehension of the
texts:

In some ways I think [code-switching] added to the text . . . to the
perspective of being Mexican American. It gives you a one-hundred-
eighty perspective of you’re the outsider, looking in. Maybe that’s
how the characters might have felt . . . they’re Mexican but they’re
American.

Being a linguistic outsider looking in was not disturbing, but an eye-
opening way to convey the potent meaning of non-ownership and
cultural difference.

While the ethnic barrier did not impede non-Latino’s access to the
texts, it did inhibit their authority over the texts and curbed their
confidence in their subjective interpretations. Some non-Latinos
experienced an uncomfortable feeling of displacement, cognizant
that they became the ‘other’ in some ways. So, being the outsider
came with the uneasy programme of non-Latinos interrogating their
own white (or Asian) privilege.10 The previously positive sense of being
the ‘outsider looking in’ turned unnerving as some non-Latinos
became reticent in class due to lack of ethnic affiliation and a
mismatch of cultural capital. Yet this distanced attachment incited at
least one student to ‘interrogate [her] own white privilege’, and turned
her reticence into a learning experience of what it means to be
‘othered’.

This ethnic boundary made non-Latinos cautious in their inter-
pretations. Samantha, a white woman from Marin County, California,
reflected:

I was afraid of misinterpreting it or thinking the wrong thing . . . . I
don’t think it was hard to read across the ethnic differences, but it
was definitely a different experience to read a set of novels by a
group of people from a different ethnic background than what I’ve
been reading in other classes which is, you know, the white dead
males.

Like Samantha, Trinika, a black woman, felt she could easily read
across the ethnic barrier but not necessarily talk across it publicly. Her
fear of misinterpretation is especially interesting because she, an
African-American woman, did not quake at speaking assuredly about
Shakespeare. Perhaps this is due to Shakespeare being an unques-
tioned part of required curriculum, such that high-achieving students
of all backgrounds must become competent in European culture in
order to be accepted as a legitimate scholar. Trinika mused, ‘I’m

914 Jessica M. Vasquez



usually not self-conscious about because I could . . . easily talk to you
about Henry James or Shakespeare and not be white, and not be
English, or any of those things. When it came to this . . . I was
definitely a lot more self-conscious’. It is more disquieting to voice
intellectual opinions on minority art forms if one lacks a personal
connection to the culture at hand because students are not trained to
cross the minority divide the way they are trained to traverse the
Atlantic ocean when discussing English canonical literature.

Non-Latino readers were presented with the task of constructing
meaning out of texts to which they were not ethnically related. Viewers
of a cultural object who are differently equipped vis-à-vis training and
cultural context will draw different conclusions and judgements about
the object: ‘But each of us has had different experience, and so each of
us has slightly different knowledge and skills of interpretation’
(Baxandall 1972, p. 29). This coincides with my finding that Latinos
often, but not exclusively, related to Chicano texts on an ethnic level,
whereas non-Latinos related to the texts on various other particular
levels, such as family structure, adolescence, or religion.

Interpretation is sensitive to the kinds of skills the mind brings to
the product such as training, schooling, and societal background
which compose an ‘interpretive backdrop’. While non-Latino readers’
ethnic backgrounds were not in concert with the Chicano texts, non-
Latinos apprehended the narratives on the grounds of other particular
elements of life experience. Non-Latino readers were not exempted
from resonating with the texts due to their ethnic dissimilarity, they
merely found other channels of relevance. Once engaged, non-Latinos
found stories strikingly similar to their own */ in terms of family
dynamics, adolescence, romance plots, religious practices (both tribal
and institutionalized), and questioning authority */ despite their
limited experiences in the areas of immigration, migrant labour, and
discrimination.

An underlying common humanity: ‘We’re all the same, and everybody’s
got a story’.

Non-Latinos connecting with Chicano literature in other-than-ethnic
ways worked in a surprising way: to reaffirm that majority and
minority peoples are basically ‘all the same’. This recognition of
commonality did not erase distinctive cultural features. Non-Latinos
read these texts as offering a glimpse into Chicano culture while
concurrently reaffirming a common humanity, a human link which
bonds all cultures at the most fundamental human level. How did non-
Latino readers deploy the educational information or personal
perspectives advanced in Chicano literature? Samantha, for one,
replied; ‘It helps me to keep a more open mind . . . . It’s given me a

Ethnic identity and Chicano literature 915



better . . . appreciation of different backgrounds’. Another simply said:
‘I just look at people differently than I did before. Everybody has a
story’. This notion that ‘everybody has a story’, a plain statement that
ratifies diversity, implicitly assumes equality of individuals and races.

Derrick echoes this statement in his answer to whether he would
recommend any of these books to a friend: ‘If I had a friend that was
pretty racist, I’d hand him one of these books, to clear up misconcep-
tions. Because these books let you know that these people are just like
you’. So, these texts produce a dual reaction that works in the
complementary fashion of appreciating different backgrounds while
realizing a common human link inextricably binding all ethnic groups.
Recognition of this human link, or fundamental sameness, provides an
inclination to empathy. The commitment to keeping an open mind and
knowing that ‘everybody has a story’ reaffirms cultural uniqueness,
while recognizing that different ethnic groups are ‘just like you’ serves
to tunnel beneath the differences and form a cross-cultural bond.

This movement of grafting commonality between two seemingly
disparate groups is rooted in a growing American social tendency of
highlighting sameness and eschewing difference, a tendency likely born
from multiculturalist ideology. Sociology of culture scholarship notes
that Americans in fact share a common cultural code, despite
specialized subgroups whose existence appear to contradict the
survival of a common framework (Varenne 1977; Bellah 1986; Sikkink
1998; Wolfe 1998). American individualism in fact implies community
in that the struggle for groups to differentiate themselves occurs within
an environment of jostling against and interrelating with other groups
(Varenne 1977). The very effort of stressing group independence and
uniqueness, then, is done within the context of a community. Further,
despite rhetoric of a ‘culture war’ that is splitting the American
middle-class, the vast majority of middle-class Americans fall in the
centre of the liberal-conservative spectrum on social issues, preferring
to find ‘common good things’ they share than ferreting out differences
that cement boundaries (Wolfe 1998, p. 62). Driving the point that
tolerance is a valorized virtue, David Sikkink (1998) demonstrated that
religious identities are personalized just as divisive religious labels are
skirted in order to avoid offending other parties. Tolerance is
increasing in the realms of public opinion and musical taste, as well,
marking the entrenchment of American cultural isomorphism (Di-
Maggio, Evans and Bryson 1996; Peterson and Kern 1996). Steeped in
this cultural perspective, it is not surprising that the non-Latino
students were inclined to search out the commonality that back-
grounds, and in fact undergirds, the cultural distinctions they
encountered in a class explicitly devoted to the aesthetic productions
of an American subculture.

916 Jessica M. Vasquez



Delineating distinctions: Difference does matter.

Non-Latinos’ ability to vicariously connect with Chicano literature
along multiple particular lines of similarity worked to underscore in
their minds a sense of basic humanity that underlies ethnicity. The
mismatch that the non-Latino readers saw as they compared the
literature with their own life experiences fostered the countervailing
notion that difference does matter. Variations in ethnicity correlate
with variations in some categories of life experience such as subjection
to racism, trials of immigration and settlement, engagement with
cultural traditions not shared by mainstream American society, and
so forth. The Chicano history and perspectives that the literature
supplied was the catalyst for a process of consciousness-raising.
The classroom equipped non-Latinos with both factual infor-
mation and subjective views of Chicano experience with which to re-
evaluate their pre-existing perceptions or stereotypes of the Chicano
people.

Catrina, a mixed-race Asian woman, remarked of the historical
literature: ‘I saw how [Chicanos] came here. Those [historical books]
helped a lot, they gave a background so I understand more of the
Chicano people, and in the [contemporary books], I saw they live here
and they’re just like us, only they have a different background’. Ethnic
literature extracts the marginalized group from its constricting place in
the social hierarchy and reconstitutes it in the mind of the reader. As
sociology of race theorists contends, interacting across racial or ethnic
boundaries helps to crumble stereotypes and fosters mutual under-
standing. For white students, this means breaching their ‘white
habitus’, or primary networks with other whites that grows racial
solidarity among whites and reinforces the racial order (Bonilla-Silva
2003).

My findings on non-Latinos are complex: on the one hand they
apprehended commonality, and on the other hand they comprehended
difference. The American code of multiculturalism and tolerance does
not readily supply a language with which to discuss structural
differences. Race scholars argue that whites and minorities have
different languages to discuss race. Minorities claim that racism has
historically and in fact continues to pervade the underlying structure
of power in society. Oppositely, whites tend to view racism as
historical, and if a contemporary concern, they view racism as an
inter-personal rather than an institutional problem (Blauner 2001).
There is a debate as to whether recognition of diversity (i.e. ‘colour
consciousness’) indicates the presence of racism or its absence
(Frankenberg 1993; Blauner 2001; Bonilla-Silva 2003). Since it is
unclear whether colourblindness is a positive objective, or whether it
masks racism (Bonilla-Silva 2003), it is understandable that American

Ethnic identity and Chicano literature 917



students of English literature would approach the touchy subject of
race and ethnicity with equally forked tendencies. All students had a
propensity for uncovering commonalities between themselves and the
Chicano characters so as to bond with them and make the story
meaningful. On the other hand, non-Latino students had an equally
strong penchant for noting dissimilarities, taking to heart how
Chicano culture is distinct from mainstream American culture.

While the non-Latino tendency to find an underlying commonality
may elide structural differences for some readers, for others, Chicano
literature can be consciousness raising. If so, do readers act differently
based on the literature they encounter? In addition to ‘keeping an
open mind’, one stellar example of a white student’s change in
interpersonal dealings indicates that, indeed, literature can be a
powerful agent of change. I asked Shelly how powerful she felt
the literature was in terms of shaping her opinion or perception
of Chicano culture. She stated her newly acquired knowledge of
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo changed her perception of
California and its Mexican or Chicano residents. She drew the link
between book-learning and family life in this detailed and thoughtful
response:

My parents were down from Oregon for my graduation. They all
wanted to go out to dinner and there’s this Mexican food place
down from my house so we went in there, a family-owned
restaurant, by a local family . . . . Most of the staff speaks Spanish
only. So we go in there and my dad was sooo rude. Sooo rude. He
was talking loud to [the waitress], just all the things that you just
learn not to do: ‘‘If you talk loud, she’ll understand.’’ (laugh) . . . It
was so infuriating. I just sat there mad and my face was all
red . . . and I just started going off about the war and the treaty
and . . . then I was glad . . . . I can definitely disagree with [my
parents’] behavior now, whereas before I’d go, ‘‘yeah, I know that’s
kind of wrong but I don’t know why it’s wrong’’. So that’s affected
my life.

The knowledge of history gained through literature helped to chip
away at prejudice and prepared Shelly to counter ethnic discrimination
in an informed and emphatic way. Shelly’s reaction to the books
converted her into a fierce advocate for cross-cultural tolerance and
respect. Shelly, as a member of a dominant social group, perceived the
hierarchy */ even as embedded in her own family */ squelching a
minority woman’s self-respect and she defended the woman thanks to
empathy that grew out of her recently acquired familiarity with the
Mexican woman’s historical burden.

918 Jessica M. Vasquez



Conclusion: Multicultural education as a means to promote social justice

The Chicano Narrative class is a testament to the power of literature to
shift readers’ behaviour, outlooks, self conceptions, self-titles, and
attitudes. Readers’ ethnicity has been shown to contribute to the
interpretation of literature in a multicultural education class and
readers’ sense of self and environment subsequently shift due to this
exposure. Latino readers’ sense of ownership of the texts flowed into a
feeling of personal and ethnic legitimization, and non-Latino readers’
sentiments of cross-cultural empathy led to an understanding of the
unfairness of the stilted social hierarchy. Ethnic literature serves an
important social function in breaking open antiquated curricula and
infusing readers with refreshing perspectives that celebrate diversity
while still stressing some commonality. The Chicano Narrative class
also provided an opportunity for students to cross and think beyond
traditional power lines. This expansive, or subversive, thinking
enlightens readers and indeed has the capacity to trouble the social
status quo on a micro-level, as readers question the basis for
predominant patterns of inequality, under-representation, and muted
voices. In a sense, ‘multi-directional cross-cultural acculturation’
(Moya 2000) was taking place in the classroom as students learnt
about the Chicano culture in an educational space that did not uphold
white, middle-class American values as the pinnacle of achievement. In
stripping the classroom of these presumptions, students enacted
Giroux’s conception of ‘critical literacy’, that is, a ‘language in which
one speaks with rather than for Others’ (Giroux 1992, p. 245).

While studying counter-hegemonic literature in a heterogeneous
setting can produce misunderstandings, anxiety over misreadings, and
defensiveness, my data show support for marginal literature as a
valuable tool for the educational system and its students.11 The impact
of exposure to marginal literature is a heightened appreciation of
cultural diversity and an overarching belief in a basic human
commonality that underlies distinction. These consequences of
engagement with peripheral literature echo Nancy Fraser’s argument
for cultural justice:

The remedy for cultural injustice . . . is some sort of cultural or
symbolic change. This could involve upwardly revaluing disre-
spected identities and the cultural products of maligned groups. It
could also involve recognizing and positively valorizing cultural
diversity. More radically still, it could involve the wholesale
transformation of societal patterns of representation, interpretation,
and communication in ways that would change everybody’s sense of
self. (Fraser 1997, p. 15)

Ethnic identity and Chicano literature 919



This demand to ‘change everybody’s sense of self’ is exactly the
transformative capacity that multicultural education classes can help
engender. While Latinos and non-Latinos read the texts differently
based on background, training, and interests, all students open to
learning through an imaginative dialogue with the text and an open
discussion among peers effectively altered their sense of self. Cultural
justice and critical literacy were carried out in the Chicano Narrative
classroom as the social hierarchy was temporarily inverted and
Chicano art forms were deemed worthy of critical attention and
placed centre-stage. Readers learnt not only factual history, but were
alerted to the obscuring mentality of dominant history. Furthermore,
students actively re-deployed in the world lessons accrued through
coursework, broadening their mental and emotional imaginative
spaces and heightening their cognizance of the roles that race plays
in contemporary society.

Acknowledgements

This project was supported through grants from the Graduate
Opportunity Program and the Mentored Research Award through
the University of California, Berkeley and the National Science
Foundation. I am deeply grateful to faculty who were generous with
their time and insights, including Nancy J. Chodorow, Ann Swidler,
Michael Omi, Laura Enriquez, Barrie Thorne, and Dawne Moon.

Notes

1. There is a debate around where to draw distinctions between race and ethnicity.

Prevailing usages of the terms conflate the two. OMB Directive 15 of 1977 described four

races (i.e., American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, and White)

and two ethnic backgrounds (of Hispanic origin and not of Hispanic origin) (American

Anthropological Association 1997). Under this definition, Hispanics are an ethnic group of

any race.

2. I define a ‘multicultural education classroom’ as one whose course curriculum and

pedagogy is committed to showcasing scientific, artistic, traditional, and/or cultural

knowledge that derives from historically or contemporarily subordinated populations.

3. See Appendix A for a list of the required reading in the Chicano Narrative class.

4. Originating within the context of the civil rights movement of the late 1960s, the term

‘Chicano’ was fashioned by and for Mexican Americans who identify with the socio-political

project of empowerment centering on a claim of being brown (as opposed to white) and

aiming for increased respect, civil liberties, and civic participation (Haney-López, Ian. 2003.

Racism on trial: the Chicano fight for justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard

University Press). A decidedly political label in the late 1960s and grounded in the largely

working-class Chicano Power movement, the title ‘Chicano’ has been popularized since its

inception.

5. See Appendix B for a complete list of respondents. Out of the eighteen interviewees, six

were male, twelve were female, seven were Chicano or Latino, four were half-Latino half-

Other, two were Asian-American, four were White (of European descent), and one was

920 Jessica M. Vasquez



African-American. The interviews were semi-structured and lasted one to two hours, and I

took fieldnotes immediately following all interviews. All interviews were tape recorded and

transcribed.

6. There is much variation among individuals encompassed by these wide categories; thus,

these categories are not meant to be airtight, homogeneous, and fully explanatory, but rather

are intended as a heuristic and analytical tool.

7. Latino and non-Latino students sought to connect with their cultural roots (‘relate’) or

encounter a multiculturalist perspective (‘explore’), respectively.

8. Credit goes to Minrose Gwin for this term. (Gwin, Minrose 1996 ‘Space Travel’, in

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 870�/900).

9. The majority of non-Latino students had some formal Spanish training but deferred

from calling themselves proficient.

10. Here my Latino versus Non-Latino categories break down. I placed Trinika, the one

African-American respondent, in the Non-Latino category, yet she has no ‘white privilege’ to

question.

11. While the effects of reading multicultural literature reported to me were overwhelmingly

positive, they ranged in type and intensity. Only one interviewee complained of not wanting

to read Chicano literature in the future, issuing grievances against the literature and the

professor’s teaching style.

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JESSICA M. VASQUEZ is a PhD Candidate in the Department of
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ADDRESS: Department of Sociology, 410 Barrows Hall, Berkeley,
CA 94720-1980, USA. Email: B/vasquezj@berkeley.edu�/

922 Jessica M. Vasquez



Appendix A: Required Reading List for the Chicano Narrative Class

The Squatter and the Don , Maria Ampara Ruiz de Burton
My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American

Autobiography, Genaro Padilla
Border Matters, Jose David Saldivar
Chicano Narrative, Ramon Saldivar
The Adventures of Don Chipote, or When Parrots Breast-Feed ,
Daniel Venegas
Cuentos: Tales from the Southwest , Rudolfo Anaya and Jose Griego
Bless Me, Ultima , Rudolfo A. Anaya
Pocho, Jose Antonio Villareal
‘‘ . . . y no se lo trago la tierra/ . . . and the earth did not part ’’,
Tomas Rivera
Martin and Meditations on the South Valley, Jimmy Santiago Baca
Loving in the War Years, Cherrie Moraga
House on Mango Street , Sandra Cisneros
Woman Hollering Creek , Sandra Cisneros
Locas, Yxta Maya Murray
Handout selections of corridos (ballads), cuentos (short stories),
folklore, and poetry.

Appendix B: Characteristics of Respondents

NAME* GENDER ETHNICITY COUNTRY
OF BIRTH
(age
at U.S.
immigration)

AGE MARITAL
STATUS

Manny M Chicano U.S. 28 Single
Estela F Chicana U.S. 21 Single
Rafael M Chicano U.S. 22 Single
Patricia F Latina U.S. 32 Married
Kathy F Chicana/

White
Canada (7) 22 Single

Iris F Native-
American/
Mexican-
American

U.S. 22 Single

Debra F Mexican/
Egyptian-
American

U.S. 21 Single

Angela F Mexican-
Swedish

U.S. 21 Single

Juan M Mexican-
American

Mexico (20) 24 Married

Ethnic identity and Chicano literature 923



APPENDIX (Continued)

NAME* GENDER ETHNICITY COUNTRY
OF BIRTH
(age
at U.S.
immigration)

AGE MARITAL
STATUS

Victor M Guatemalan-
American

U.S. 25 Single

Roberto M El Salvadorian El Salvador
(5)

25 Not
reported

Samantha F White U.S. 21 Single
Shelly F White U.S. 27 Single
Nina F White U.S. 40 Single
Derrick M White U.S. 21 Single
Kiki F Asian-

American
U.S. 21 Single

Catrina F ½ Chinese,
¼ Japanese,
¼ German

U.S. 21 Single

Trinika F African-
American

U.S. 26 Single

*All names are pseudonyms

924 Jessica M. Vasquez