Chicano Satire: A Study in Literary Culture by Guillermo E. Hernandez (review)

234Rocky Mountain Review Gothic (figured in the marginalized and "feminized" character of Ezra Jennings) than oftraditional detective fiction. For those who recall Collins as merely the tyro of his mentor Dickens, as the coiner of the bromide "Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait," or the author of one or two great novels, Heller's work presents a vastly more complex man and literary phenomenon. Densely reasoned, frequently brilliant, and compelling throughout, Heller's study is an important model for feminist scholarship on male writers. PATRICE CALDWELL Eastern New Mexico University GUILLERMO E. HERNANDEZ. Chicano Satire: A Study in Literary Culture. Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1991. 152 p. Guillermo Hernandez provides what he describes as an intertextual approach to the examination of several Chicano literary works from various regions, perspectives, and genres: Luis Valdez's theatre, José Montoya's poetry , and Rolando Hinojosa's prose fiction. Hernandez places these authors and their works in a larger cultural context and emphasizes "how historical circumstances in Chicano communities produce cultural paradigms that appear in literary texts as evaluative frameworks to be applied in the analysis of Chicano conduct." Recognizing that both Anglo-American and Mexican cultural values exert a strong influence on Chicano life, he argues that the "critical interpretation of Chicano texts must be particularly sensitive to ingroup perspectives" (x). From this, he focuses on satire, which he convincingly shows is an important aspect in Chicano discourse. The examination of the use of humor and invective in the creation of literary culture in three distinct authors illuminates the larger perspective of the study of the conflict that has characterized much of the Chicano community's relationship with dominant Anglo culture. Hernandez frames his study with a carefully structured and highly enlightening discussion of the nature of satire itself. He emphasizes how, in the Western tradition, satire is "associated with a number of stereotyped figures who are customarily subjected to hostility, humor, or else indifference ," negative figures who can be traced to marginal groups or individuals who are frequently subjected to censure or abuse (3). The tensions between dominant and marginal groups give rise to and allow satire to prosper; it is thus a genre that has traditionally been directly related to social history. Hernandez's use of the so-called Hegemonic Spectrum informs and brings clarity to his discussion of the mutual dependency that exists between normative and deviant qualities associated respectively with dominant groups and individuals and those considered extraneous to them. Especially helpful is his demonstration of how the Hegemonic Spectrum provides a conceptual framework that helps us understand the nature of satire itself and how it differs from comedy, a genre with which it is frequently confused. While in comedy the debasement of those who are Book Reviews235 ridiculed or abused serves principally to amuse without challenging the values and symbols of the status quo, satire ridicules and invalidates "the normative principles and interpretations upheld by victims who are portrayed with scorn" (5). Chicano satirists in particular have served to embody the diverse attitudes that the Chicano community has held toward Mexican and Anglo-American normative models over the past century. Satiric discourse thus has consistently expressed the in-group's response to "the distinctive perspectives derived from historical experience" (5). Hernandez demonstrates how cultural diversity is closely linked to contrasting historical perspectives and the emergence of literary themes by briefly contrasting literary texts from different regions and different periods : María Amparo Ruiz Burton's TAe Squatter and the Don (1885), Leo Carrillo's TAe California I Love (1961), "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez" (1901), J. Humberto Robles' Los desarraigados (1962), and Richard Rodriguez's Hunger ofMemory (1982). The role of Chicano comic and satiric figures in other texts similarly reflects the socioeconomic diversity and cultural variation that are historically, politically, and regionally based. After setting up his critical apparatus and amply illustrating its applicability and appropriateness in the introductory chapter, Hernandez devotes a chapter each to selected works by Luis Valdez, José Montoya, and Rolando Hinojosa. In the second chapter, he traces the evolution of comic and satiric figures in the Californian Valdez's art. In the third chapter, he shows how the New...