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Chacón's Early Life and Social Milieu
Chacón as a Key Collector of Archival Materials
Entrance into the Public Sphere of Social Engagement and Defense
Chacon's Literary Endeavors: The Development of a Regional Narrative
An Assessment of Chacón's Two Principal Works
Conclusion: A Watershed Figure with a Literary, Historical, and Cultural Objective
Chacón, Eusebio
Francisco A. LomelíFrancisco A. LomelíDepartment of Latin American and Iberian Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.430
Eusebio Chacón was a Mexican American (sometimes referred to as Chicano) figure who straddled the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is someone who was forgotten and overlooked for about eighty years within the annals of Southwestern literature. He resurfaced in the mid-1970s as a key missing link in what is now called Chicano literature, at a time when its literary lineage was blurry and unknown. He was, therefore, instrumental in allowing critics to look back into the dusty shelves of libraries to identify writers who embodied the Mexican American experience within specific moments in history. Both his person and his writings provide an important window into subjects that interfaced with identity, literary formation and aesthetics, and social conditions, as well as how such early writers negotiated a new sense of Americanism while retaining some of their cultural background. Eusebio Chacón stands out as an outstanding example of turn-of-the-century intelligence, sensibility, versatility, and historical conscience in his attempts to educate people of Mexican descent about their rightful place in the United States as writers, social activists, and cultural beings. He fills a significant void that had remained up to the mid-1970s, which reveals how writings by such Mexican American writers were considered marginal.
Southwest Hispanic letters
first ethnic renaissance
Chicano literary history
Chicano literary genealogy
Eusebio Chacón
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