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Colonial Legacies in Chicana/o Literature and Culture exposes the ways in which colonialism is expressed in the literary and cultural production of the U.S. Southwest, a region that has experienced at least two distinct colonial periods since the sixteenth century.

Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez traces how Spanish colonial texts reflect the motivation for colonial domination. She argues that layers of U.S. colonialism complicate how Chicana/o literary scholars think about Chicana/o literary and cultural production. She brings into view the experiences of Chicana/o communities that have long-standing ties to the U.S. Southwest but whose cultural heritage is tied through colonialism to multiple nations, including Spain, Mexico, and the United States.

While the legacies of Chicana/o literature simultaneously uphold and challenge colonial constructs, the metaphor of the kaleidoscope makes visible the rupturing of these colonial fragments via political and social urgencies. This book challenges readers to consider the possibilities of shifting our perspectives to reflect on stories told and untold and to advocate for the inclusion of fragmented and peripheral pieces within the kaleidoscope for more complex understandings of individual and collective subjectivities.

This book is intended for readers interested in how colonial legacies are performed in the U.S. Southwest, particularly in the context of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. Readers will relate to the book’s personal narrative thread that provides a path to understanding fragmented identities.

Time is at the core of how we think about colonialism in North America, with many seeing the first footfalls of newly arrived Europeans as indelibly marking the end of one era and the beginning of another. However, this understanding of time often serves to perpetuate outdated narratives about Indigenous people, normalizing colonial domination.

This volume unsettles conventional understandings of time in the study of Indigenous-colonial interactions in North America, acknowledging both the enduring nature of colonial legacies and the radical possibilities of Indigenous futures. The contributors largely approach this goal from the perspective of archaeology, with a particular concern for how we can effectively employ archaeological and related historical methods in collaboration with tribal nations and other descendant communities. The chapters engage with broader interdisciplinary questions about time, periodization, and temporality to build more nuanced and responsive understandings of Native-lived colonialism. 
 

Contributors
Nathan Acebo
Kaitlin M. Brown
Wade Campbell
Emily Clark
Ruben Cu:k Ba’ak
Jacob Holland-Lulewicz
Nicholas V. Kessler
Nicholas C. Laluk
Koji Lau-Ozawa
Heather Law Pezzarossi
Lindsay Martel Montgomery
Lee M. Panich
Michelle M. Pigott
Robert W. Preucel
Christopher B. Rodning
Sarah Simeonoff