This course focuses on a unique category of literature known as Life Writing through three genres that Chicana/o/x authors have used as the venue to explore foundational questions related to their personal lives and broader political resonances. We will focus especially on the literatures of protest, revolution, and also ideological varied perspectives from Chicanx authors to offer sustained in-depth attention to the largest and most longstanding Latinx group in the area referred to as the US.

Autobiography focuses on the story of a life as told by the author (usually with intermediaries), and generally involves a chronicle of a marginal subject’s integration into the polis. Testimonial Literature, or Testimonio as it is more commonly known, has many iterations but the contemporary model in Chicana/o/x and broader Latin American contexts involves a unique structure and function: the text serves as an opportunity for an author to meditate on how their own individual struggles are linked to broader social and political contexts that they commit to transforming through specific types of activism, from protests to armed insurrection. Memoir is a genre that involves myriad permutations but generally chronicles a formative life experience that may or may not involve broader meditations on politics.

We will read a range of foundational texts to explore the ideological subtexts of these cultural artifacts. Historical and political contexts explored include various wars (US-Mexico War and subsequent Mexican American insurgencies, WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Central American Revolutions), various Ethnic Power Movements with attention to 1060s and 1970s student movements, Gulf War and War on Terror narratives, and contemporary protests and mobilizations. The course materials will be supplemented with podcasts and additional multimedia texts, and assignments will involve both writing as well as group multimedia presentation formats.