Criticism > Poetry > Baca, Jimmy Santiago - Julián Olivares (essay date 1988)

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Julián Olivares (essay date 1988)

SOURCE: Olivares, Julián. “Two Contemporary Chicano Verse Chronicles.” Americas Review 16, nos. 3-4 (fall-winter 1988): 214-31.

[In the following essay, Olivares offers a comparison of thematic and narrative strategies in Baca's Martín and Meditations on the South Valley and Tino Villanueva's Crónica de mis años peores, considering both works as semi-autobiographical verse texts.]

Upon engaging an autobiographical text, the reader has certain expectations. He expects that what he is about to read is true and that the experiences related by the autobiographical subject are eventful. Implicitly, the author is claiming that his experiences are important because, through their recollection and arrangement, he has undergone a process of self-discovery that he feels needs to be made known.¹ This is the autobiographical impulse.² With a work of fiction, the reader...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Ron Arias (review date 1982)
   2. Michael Hogan (review date 1983)
   3. Liam Rector (review date 1988)
   4. Julián Olivares (essay date 1988)
   5. Scott Slovic (review date 1991)
   6. Jimmy Santiago Baca (essay date 1992)
   7. Jimmy Santiago Baca and John Keene (interview date 1993)
   8. Robert Franklin Gish (essay date 1996)
   9. George Moore (essay date 1998)
   10. Publishers Weekly (review date 2001)
   11. Donna Seaman (review date 2001)
   12. Jimmy Santiago Baca and Elizabeth Farnsworth (interview date 2001)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. How to Analyze a Poem
2. Poetry