“This is the book I wanted to write. Combining film study, political theory, historical analysis, and theories of autobiography, Velasco traces the tensions imminent in any notion of a stable ‘self’ identity in order to configure the ways in which fracture can be ameliorated through a healing connection to ancient sources of a collective identity located in automitografía.” (Genaro M. Padilla, English Department Chair, University of California, Berkeley, USA and the author of “My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American Autobiography”)
“A brilliant reconceptualization of the autobiography genre in Mexican American literary production. Velasco has identified a splendid Chicano/a literary technology for inscribing individual self-experience and affirmation coupled with a will to resist and struggle against political, social and economic oppression for their community.” (Maria Herrera Sobek, Professor of Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA and the author of “Northward Bound: The Mexican Immigrant Experience in Ballad and Song”)
“Velasco situates Chicana/o autobiographical writing within the critical geography of the borderlands and the temporalities of postcolonial trauma, political and aesthetic revolution, and future collective transformation. His new readings are historically grounded, theoretically-informed, and elegantly arranged to represent a movement and a literature of mutual construction.” (Leigh Gilmore, Visiting Scholar, Brown University, USA and the author of “The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony“)
“Velasco’s compelling study powerfully redefines a genre and makes a decisive case for the centrality of Chicana/o writings in contemporary American literature.” (Ramon Saldivar, Hoagland Family Professor of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University, USA and the author of “Chicano Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference”)