SOURCE: Martín-Rodríguez, Manuel M. “Reading (in) the Past: Textual Recovery and the History of (Reading) Chicano/a Literature.” In Life in Search of Readers: Reading (in) Chicano/a Literature, pp. 139-70. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003.

In the following essay, Martín-Rodríguez explores the trend, which began in the mid-1980s among Chicano/a scholars, of rediscovering earlier works of Chicano/a literature that had been disregarded for ideological reasons, but have nevertheless influenced contemporary Chicano/a literature.

Upon dusty shelves, frayed and forgotten, the books of this history may still be hidden. By word of mouth, from time to time, there is word of a lost literature, in reminiscences and folk memories.

—Stan Steiner (1970)¹

It is our belief that an effort should be made to trace the historical development of Mexican American literature now that it has been recognized as a subject worthy...