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This addition to the Klail City Death Trip Series is a murder mystery complete with shrewd detectives, naive disciples, and the misleading of genuine clues. Hinojosa's sleuths are Lt. Rafe Buenrostro of the Belken County Homicide Squad and Captain Lisandro Gomez Solis of Tamaulipas, Mexico.
The scene is the Texas-Mexico border. Historically a site of conflict and violence, today it is the dividing line over which the business of drug-smuggling and its attendant mayhem takes place. Well-worn and wise in middle age, Rafe Buenrostro of the Belken County Homicide Squad is a master detective. When drug-related slayings begin occurring practically in his own backyard, Buenrostro must pierce the mystery of a crime family apparently at war with itself. As cadavers keep turning up on both sides of the Rio Grande, Buenrostro and his corps of bi-cultural sleuths visit the small cantinas, houses of ill repute, and expansive ranches of drug lords south of the river. Yet profiting equally from the illicit trade are some seemingly immaculate, well-kept suburban homes on the northern side. It is in these suburbs that revelations of seamy sex and revenge unfold. In Ask a Policeman, as well as his other novels, Rolando Hinojosa reveals a rich cross-section of life among both the high and low inhabitants of the two nations sharing the Rio Grande Valley.
In his 1985 novel Partners in Crime, writer Rolando Hinojosa introduced homicide investigator Rafe Buenrostro, the first Chicano protagonist in one of the most enduring genres of modern literature. Since that time, Chicano writers have embraced the detective novel, successfully diversifying and refining a traditional Anglo American and British genre. The 21 whodunits of Hinojosa, Rudolfo Anaya, Lucha Corpi, Michael Nava and Manuel Ramos are closely studied in this groundbreaking work. The models, both contemporary and Romantic, of this relatively new Chicano genre are first discussed. Next come detailed analysis and reviews of such novels as Shaman Winter, Partners in Crime, Cactus Blood and 18 others, focusing on how each writer departs from contemporary detective genre formula, uniquely rendering a particular regional or cultural variation of what it means to be Chicano. It is this departure from the norm that defines these writings and distinguishes them from the Anglo American and British whodunit. Interviews with the writers conclude the work.
Welcome to Klail City, in Belken County, along the Mexico border in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. In the weeks leading up to the Democratic primary, Jehu Malacara chronicles the political rabble-rousing of Klail City's wealthiest citizens in letters to his cousin Rafe Buenrostro. Led by Arnold "Noddy" Perkins, the who's who of Belken County create a complex web of relationships. Wrangling bank loans, club memberships, and local politics, Perkins dominates the political and economic landscape of the community. When Malacara turns up missing, and the writer, P. Galindo, begins interviewing the citizens, tales of deceit and betrayal float to the surface. From Jehu's knockout girlfriend Ollie to up-...
One of America's leading interpreters of the Chicana experience dismantles the discourses that "frame" women who rebel against patriarchal strictures as "bad women" and offers empowering models of struggle, resistance, and rebirth.
The first comprehensive interpretation of the work of a major figure in Chicano literature, Klaus Zilles's study of the fourteen novels in Rolando Hinojosa's Klail City Death Trip series will appeal equally to the specialist, to the student, and to the interested reader of Hinojosa's intriguing and innovative "Tejano" novels. The series is dedicated to revealing the suppressed oral history of Mexican Texas and to making the reader a companion on a quest for this elusive history. Published between 1973 and 1998, the Klail City series ranges in historical time from the mid-1700s to the end of the twentieth century, attesting to 250 years of Spanish-Mexican presence in the Lower Río Grande Val...
Joining the current debates in American literary history, José David Saldívar offers a challenging new perspective on what constitutes not only the canon in American literature, but also the notion of America itself. His aim is the articulation of a fresh, transgeographical conception of American culture, one more responsive to the geographical ties and political crosscurrents of the hemisphere than to narrow national ideologies. Saldívar pursues this goal through an array of oppositional critical and creative practices. He analyzes a range of North American writers of color (Rolando Hinojosa, Gloria Anzaldúa, Arturo Islas, Ntozake Shange, and others) and Latin American authors (José Ma...
The literary culture of the Spanish-speaking Southwest has its origins in a harsh frontier environment marked by episodes of intense cultural conflict, and much of the literature seeks to capture the epic experiences of conquest and settlement. The Chicano literary canon has evolved rapidly over four centuries to become one of the most dynamic, growing, and vital parts of what we know as contemporary U.S. literature. In this comprehensive examination of Chicano and Chicana literature, Charles M. Tatum brings a new and refreshing perspective to the ethnic identity of Mexican Americans. From the earliest sixteenth-century chronicles of the Spanish Period, to the poetry and narrative fiction of...
Winner, Modern Language Association Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies, 2006 Popular fiction, with its capacity for diversion, can mask important cultural observations within a framework that is often overlooked in the academic world. Works thought to be merely "escapist" can often be more seriously mined for revelations regarding the worlds they portray, especially those of the disenfranchised. As detective fiction has slowly earned critical respect, more authors from minority groups have chosen it as their medium. Chicana/o authors, previously reluctant to write in an underestimated genre that might further marginalize them, have ...
This collection of critical essays addresses the complex relationship between contemporary literature theory and Chicano literaturea literature that is not part of the traditional literary cannon. The contributors, including Yolanda Julia Broyles, H?ctor CalderÑn, Margarita Cotà-Càrdenas, Lauro Flores, Patricia de la Fuente, Rolando Hinojosa, Luis Leal, Jos? David SaldÕvar, RamÑn SaldÕvar, MarÕa I. Duke dos Santos, and Rosaura Sànchez, draw upon a diverse array of theoriesMarxist, feminist, post-structuralistto make fresh, critical comments, not only on Rolando HinojosaÍs work, Klail City Death Trip series, but also on literary theory today.