SOURCE: Olivares, Julián. “Two Contemporary Chicano Verse Chronicles.” Americas Review 16, nos. 3-4 (fall-winter 1988): 214-31.

In the following essay, Olivares offers a comparison of thematic and narrative strategies in Baca's Martín and Meditations on the South Valley and Tino Villanueva's Crónica de mis años peores, considering both works as semi-autobiographical verse texts.

Upon engaging an autobiographical text, the reader has certain expectations. He expects that what he is about to read is true and that the experiences related by the autobiographical subject are eventful. Implicitly, the author is claiming that his experiences are important because, through their recollection and arrangement, he has undergone a process of self-discovery that he feels needs to be made known.¹ This is the autobiographical impulse.² With a work of fiction, the reader makes a different pact with the author and the text. What the author writes is not true but...