SOURCE: “‘An Utterance More Pure Than Word’: Gender and the Corrido Tradition in Two Contemporary Chicano Poems,” in Feminist Measures: Soundings in Poetry and Theory, edited by Lynn Keller and Cristianne Miller, University of Michigan Press, 1994, pp. 184-207.

In the following exceprt, McKenna examines the phenomenon of Chicana poetry and the manner in which Cervantes fits into that role while defying patriarchal tradition.

The corrido tradition has long been constructed by primarily male Chicano scholars as a male-dominated genre that takes as its root a narrative of Chicano/Mexicano history centered on social conflict. As Américo Paredes has studied this narrative ballad form, the poem originates from the conflict arising out of the encroachment of Anglo Americans into the South Texas valley in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and the response of the resident Spanish/Mexican population that had established its presence in that territory...