“This ambitious and accessible book is the best I have seen on Chicano literary culture. Padilla has searched archival sources diligently and has brought to our attention major personal statements—itself no small feat—that treat the definitive events of early Mexican American experience. He offers insights on how ethnic/cultural identity is formed; on how distinct literary traditions emerge and evolve; and on the politics of literary production and publication. Because he engages these questions so skillfully this book will have implications—and readers—beyond the circle of literary scholarship.”—Raymund A. Paredes, University of California, Los Angeles
“This book is nothing less than the recovery of the nineteenth-century formations of Chicano autobiography. . . . My History, Not Yours exemplifies the best features of traditional historical research and contemporary critical methods.”—William L. Andrews, series editor, Wisconsin Studies in American Autobiography