A Promising Problem: The New Chicana/o History . Edited by Carlos Kevin Blanton

Abstract

In A Promising Problem, Carlos Blanton notes a paradox for Chicana/o historians. On one hand, a new generation is advancing the field in four specific ways, by: 1) exploring Chicana/o identities that are “relational” and “transnational” instead of culturally nationalist; 2) venturing beyond the Southwest; 3) demonstrating a keen self-awareness as members of well-established sub-field of U.S. history; and 4) following earlier historians in their “quest for justice” and portrayal of “social realities” (p. ix). On the other hand, despite its dynamism and (not always harmonious) entrenchment within the academy, Chicana/o history and Chicanas/os themselves still suffer public attacks that delegitimize them. According to Blanton, this conundrum represents the “promise” and the “problem” of the new Chicana/o history. But beyond the external threats that Blanton focuses on in his introduction, the following essays identify internal, more existential challenges to “traditional” Chicana/o history. Traditional Chicana/o history, Blanton writes, held “assumptions of a far more universal experience, and a more flattened sense of community than scholars today would assert.” It “came from the activist ethos” of the 1960s and 1970s, and it “emphasized the proletarian, revolutionary spirit in Chicana/o history and the theme of resistance against the overwhelming totality of structural racism and class exploitation” (p. 9).