ABSTRACT

The history of Chicana/o literature is characterized by a constant flow of projection and impact. By this the chapter means that its series of transformative impacts within American letters results from its authors recreating content from the building blocks of reality that make up the past and present – all while writing for ideal readers who come to exist materially in the future. The 20th century witnessed the increased presence of Mexican American multi-spatiotemporal literature created with an increasingly varied readership in mind. For instance, from 1913 to 1916 Maria Cristina Mena published her short stories in The Century Magazine and American Magazine. And in the late 1940s, Mario Suarez wrote short stories for the Arizona Quarterly. During the 1970s, Chicana/o literature became more varied in its projections and impacts; it pushed against attempts at its categorization.