SOURCE: Aranda, Jr., José F. “Making the Case for New Chicano/a Studies: Recovering Our Alienated Selves.” Arizona Quarterly 58, no. 1 (spring 2002): 127-58.

In the following essay, Aranda discusses the changing focus of the Chicano/a movement since the 1980s, emphasizing pivotal works by Gloria Anzaldúa, Richard Rodriguez, and Cherríe Moraga, among others.

Chicano/a studies is, and has been, moving in directions that are decidedly at odds from its origins in the Chicano/a Movement. While much of Chicano/a studies' ethical, political, and philosophical base remains the same—attention to the historic consequences of Mexican Americans' minority status within the United States—recent scholarship in history and literature has nevertheless opened the field to questions that challenge its institutional foundations. Today, the field is dominated by the trope and cultural politics made famous by Gloria Anzaldúa's “borderlands.” Though many of the ideas discussed in...