|
Américo Paredes distinguished himself as a journalist, novelist, short story writer, poet, folklorist, and as Professor of English and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. Admired as one of the inspiring founders of Mexican American Studies in colleges and universities across the United States, Paredes' life-long interest in Mexican-American history and culture motivated him during his early years to collect corridos from farmers and villagers living on the Lower Rio Grande, resulting in his pioneering book "With His Pistol in His Hand": A Border Ballad and Its Hero (1958), and in other books on folklore, poetry, and narrative fiction. Border Folk Balladeers: Critical Studies on Américo Paredes is a book of significant value to scholars, teachers, students, and to the general reader interested in the history and culture of Mexicans and Mexican Americans born on both sides of the Mexico-US border. It contains a full-length introduction and eleven essays written exclusively for this volume by scholars in the fields of folklore, literary criticism, and critical race theory, and who are renowned authorities on the work of Américo Paredes. Grouped into three sections, this book includes studies on theories of the Texas Modern; the Latin American critical tradition; border writing in world literatures; ethnography in minority communities; an analysis of Texas-Mexican border jokelore; and, among other critical studies, a comprehensive probe into the international drug traffic in the Mexico-US border, with an emphasis on narcoballads and narconovels, the contemporary offshoots of the Texas-Mexican border corrido. Intro -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- Part One: Border Theory and the Legacy of Américo Paredes -- Américo Paredes, Walter Prescott Webb, and the Antinomies of Theory -- Américo Paredes and the Latin American Critical Tradition -- Américo Paredes and the Work of Border Writing -- Some Examples of Cultural Vindication and Integration in the Works of El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Américo Paredes -- Américo Paredes: Remembering the Man and His Legacy -- Part Two: Borders, Bridges, and Conflicted Identities -- Transitionality: The Border as Barrier and Bridge -- Reworking Américo Paredes' Notion of 'Greater Mexico' -- The Politics of Ethnography -- Part Three: Border Narratives, Jokelore, and Corridos -- Uncle Remus con Chile -- Globalized Afterlives of the Border Corrido and the Corrido Hero -- Contested Citizenship -- Contributors.
|
