Pocho Handbook

Hanging in the Archives
I started this blog to supplement my dissertation writing, giving me another space to bounce pocho/pochteca/poch[o]tec@ thoughts against the virtual wall.
Fortunately for my dis, I've derelicted this blog for pages, but I did want to post on a book I ran across called the The Pocho Handbook.

It happened when I was doing some archival research at UT Austin's Benson Collection for all things pocho. In the Pocho Handbook, it begins acknowledging the chapbook-like document's status as a kind of internal document among the diverse Chicano population. The document takes a narrative form after the initial situating of what the purpose of the document is. In it, there's some discussion of the connection to the pochteca that I found helpful for my work.

The handbook reaffirms how pocho demonstrates the diversity of latinidad, rejecting the monolithic notion.

More Subjectivity of Pocho Identity

Bandolero, El Pocho Y La Raza

Maciel's text comes from a film studies perspective, addressing issues like stereotype in the cinema with regard to Mexicans and Mexican Americans. With regard to thinking and speaking about the representations of 'pocho,' Maciel draws on a comedic Mexican actor who sings a song about being neither Mexican nor American because he is pocho.This reminds me of Anzaldua's use of pocho in "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" because of the Chicano-Spanish contextualization of the definition of pocho with which she was familiar. In the book, Maciel touches on the fluidity of pocho as an identifier going between Mexicano and Chicano points of reference.

Google Book Link:
http://books.google.com/books?id=VNv1i2aoP8sC&lpg=PP1&dq=bandolero%20el%20pocho%20la%20raza&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false