ABSTRACT
I take the Chicana and Chicano literary canon as historically defined, as the representative authors, works, and themes of periods as the literary tradition moves forward in time. The literary canon also means the re-evaluation of works from a prior period. The Chicano Movement of the 1960s produced literature, art forms, that gained visibility concurrent with labor, social, and civil rights struggles. It was at its inception a youth movement, post-World War II baby-boomers who became the first wave of Mexican-American university students. In rapid succession, literary works published by ethnic presses and the establishment of institutional units throughout the West and Southwest made this literature and its study possible. And here the emergence of a reading public is the defining element. Like no other time before in Mexican-American history, the 1960s produced a readership composed of students, professors, and literary critics.
