Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-13-2017
Publication Title
Working-Class Literature(s): Historical and International Perspectives
First Page
128
Last Page
158
Abstract
Working-class literature has never had a wide audience in Mexico, always overshadowed by other types of literature, such as the novel of the Mexican Revolution, the regionalist novel, and the indigenous novel. Nevertheless, there is no better place, as this chapter will suggest, to consider the status of literature and its relationship to history and ideology than from the genre of work and the worker. Approaching working-class literature as an evolving genre in relation to different modernization projects, this chapter will map out similarities and point to differences between various labor literatures—including proletarian literature in the 1930s, the testimonio (a new type first-person documentary genre) in the 1960s, and the literatures of the early 2000s—in order to argue ultimately that the genre provides a privileged space to think about labor and exploitation in Mexico.
Recommended Citation
Di Stefano, E. 2017. Mexican Working-Class Literature, or The Work of Literature in Mexico. In: Lennon J. & Nilsson M, Working-Class Literature(s). Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/bam.f
Comments
This is an Open Access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (unless stated otherwise), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright is retained by the author.