The Recovery of Chicano Nineteenth-Century Autobiography

Abstract

ALTHOUGH THE STUDY OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY IS FLOURISHING, ALMOST NOTHING has been written about the tradition of autobiography in Chicano culture.' One would think that there had been no autobiographical voice within a culture that has had a vital literary tradition for hundreds of years. It is as though individual Chicanos had not set their lives to paper, had lived and then disappeared from history without a trace. This is partly true, but certainly not because of illiteracy or disinclination. Chicanos have been silenced not only by the grave, but by political transformation, social dispossession, cultural rupture and linguistic alienation. Yet, traces of Chicano lives do indeed reside in autobiographical narratives that transform life history into textual permanence-memoirs so long out of print they are nearly forgotten; cultural histories in which the I encloses itself in a language of geography, social custom, political intrigue; diaries, family histories, personal poetry, collections of selfdisclosing correspondence. Lives are scattered on broken pages, faded, partially lost at the margins, suspended in language unread until there is a listener who opens the file and begins. The archaeological project to recover Chicano autobiography thus begins here. Digging through archives-layer by textual layer-searching for material that will construct an autobiographical tradition in Chicano culture is the first requirement of the archaeological project. Discovering and identifying autobiographical narrative is a major undertaking, especially when such work