Literary representations of folk tradition in contemporary Chicano-a fiction

Contemporary Chicano/a narratives are strongly rooted in Mexican and Mexican American folklore and collective memory: oral cuentos, dichos and popular folk characters, songs and corridos, traditional recipes, folk medicine, religious rituals, family anecdotes and memories are omnipresent in literary works produced by Mexican Americans. What these works share is that they emphasise the fluidity and flexibility inherent in cultural transmission. Cultural traditions represented in contemporary Chicano/a novels are continuously transformed, reinvented and renegotiated; they are complex cultural constructs, which reflect on how contemporary Chicanos/as continue to imagine their cultural heritage. Combining insights from the research into collective memory, ethnic semiotics and cultural narratology this study explores continuity and change of folk traditions (re)constructed in literature and examines how these traditions are constantly used and reused in forming Chicano/a memories and identities.