ABSTRACT
This project, a late part of the greater project of “recovering the U.S.- Hispanic literary heritage” is perhaps both in and out of time; while recovery work proceeds on Chicano literature, so much of the work of early Chicanas remains lost, unnoticed, or ignored. Chicana writing has not yet found a “home” in the canon, regardless of the presence of Sandra Cisneros and Ana Castillo. My thesis-that the roots and fundamental ideas of Chicanisma, and the anticipatory impetus for Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Angela de Hoyos, and others are found (at least in part) in the early 20th century writings of women from the Texas-Mexico border-may seem obvious to some critics unfamiliar with Chicana academic endeavor. The literary truth remains, however-Chicana literature’s “home” seems to be in flux, and its foundations are still being built while the stories rise above. The more immediate and perhaps disturbing reason for the tardiness of this work in the historical timeline is simply that women’s writing from the first half of the 20th century US-Mexico border became more widely available-through accidental discovery, determined archival research, and reanalysis of forgotten texts-only recently, with a great deal of work being done in the 1990s.
