TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World

The essay introduces some of the main themes of Mexican American literature and suggests a connection with the phenomenology of the alien (Bernhard Waldenfels) and such resultant values as ambivalence and hybridity. This frame of reference allows a brief exploration of specific topics present in several US-Mexico border authors, including Rubén Martínez and the “zigzagging” consciousness of border life, Gloria Anzaldúa and the values of hybridity and indigenous ancestry, Tomás Rivera and intra-cultural conflict, Lucha Corpi and the clash between ideology and history, and Richard Rodriguez’ problems of assimilation and familial contradictions.