SOURCE: Lomelí, Francisco A. “An Interpretive Assessment of Chicano Literature and Criticism.” In Literature and Ethnicity in the Cultural Borderlands, edited by Jesús Benito and Ana María Manzanas, pp. 63-79. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002.

In the following essay, Lomelí examines the social, cultural, and literary aspects of Chicano/a literature as it has evolved from self-discovery in the 1960s through acceptance of greater diversity at the end of the twentieth century.

There is little doubt that Chicano literature and the accompanying criticism are currently at productive stages of development. Their expansion and rate of growth have become a phenomena difficult to document, strictly due to the sheer quantitative proliferation. Greatly fueled by the impulsive fervor of the Chicano social movement of the 1960s and 1970s, known as a Renaissance or a “Florecimiento,” the literature garnered a messianic bent during that era. At the peak of the social movement...