Of Myth and Men: Racialized Masculinities in Luis Alberto Urrea's In Search of Snow

This article focuses on In Search of Snow (1994), the understudied first novel of the critically acclaimed author Luis Alberto Urrea. My analysis centers on the triangulation of a diverse group of Latinx men, including a white presenting Mexican, a Chicano, and an Apache who negates his Mexican ancestry, and how each responds to culturally scripted forms of masculinity taken directly from historical and popular forms. Drawing on literary, masculinity, Mexican American, and Indigenous studies, I argue that Urrea generates a model for the critical interrogation of ethnic and/or racialized performances of masculinity that illustrate the differences among and between Latinx men in the US Southwest.