The Historical Imagination in Arturo Islas's The Rain God and Migrant Souls

Abstract

To some extent the maturity of Chicano writers, Eliud Martinez contends, be attributed to their growing knowledge of contemporary Mexican and Latin American literature and to the influence of la nueva novela latinoamericana on Chicano novels (9). It is a reasonable assertion and further evidence can be found in the convergence of Latin American and Chicano/a historical narratives. It is certainly noteworthy that writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes have turned with full force toward the writing of massive historical novels. In addressing this intriguing turn of events and examining historical consciousness in Latin American literature, Alfred J. MacAdam makes this observation: Writing has now become the means by which Latin America can learn to live with its ghosts, learn from them and use the burden of history instead of being crushed by it (562). Notably, the historian of the Angel family in The Rain God admixes el dia de los muertos with the reconstruction of