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Rafael Pérez-Torres
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2006, 284pp. Paperback
ISBN 0816645957
One of the most divergently adapted concepts in Latino/a and Latin American Studies is mestizaje, the racial and cultural mixture linked to histories of colonialism and racism as well as nationalist resistance. In the United States, mestizaje has been a key term in defining Chicano/a identity from the early movimiento gestures of racial unification to more recent theoretical examinations of how mixed identity transcends the limitations of "pure" racial categories. Rafael Pérez-Torres's new book, Mestizaje: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture , traces the significance of mestizaje in a variety of discourses. His flexible analytical lens shifts fluidly from critical theory and literary narratives to popular music and public arts to highlight different aesthetic and political dimensions of mestizaje's resistance to "static" or "self-contained" forms (p. 218). For Pérez-Torres, mestizo/a identity oscillates between victimhood and agency (p.xiii). Unlike more utopian theories of hybridity, this one balances the possibilities of multiplicity and fluidity with reminders of the violence and alienation that mark mixed-race identities in the Americas. Racial mixture "metaphorizes" "the numerous dislocations produced through the as yet unfinished naming and unnaming of Chicano and Chicana subjectivity" (p. 217).
Pérez-Torres's readings are persuasive and engaging. He introduces readers to a stimulating range of new literary works, musical groups, and poster artists in relation to more familiar Mexican and Chicano/a writings about mestizaje. This book, as a result, goes beyond the well-worn paths of what is usually said about mestizaje to examine new engagements with the term and to demonstrate how mestizaje functions beyond the bounds...