As a genre, Chicano literature grew out of the broader Chicano Movement of the 1960s that actively resisted the historical erasure of Mexican American cultural heritage and identity. Scholar and author F. Arturo Rosales argues that in the wake of US conquest that absorbed Northern Mexico into the Southwestern United States, “Mexicans witnessed the immersion of their culture and economy into a powerful Anglo-American political and industrial monolith” (F. Arturo Rosales. Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Arte Publico Press, 1996. p 2), that eventually gave rise to a cadre of Mexican American writers—such as Rudolfo Anaya, Sandra Cisneros, Jose Antonio Villareal, and Ana Castillo, among others—that rooted their work in their cultural identity, history, and folklore.

As a literary tradition, Chicano Literature often explores themes of biculturalism, social marginalization, and the search for identity between two worlds. Writer Rafael C. Castillo describes Chicano literature “as a critical and creative response to discrimination and prejudice that affected Mexicans who immigrated into the United States after the 1900s, as well as those naturalized citizens who became Mexican Americans with roots in the American conquest of the Southwest after 1848” (Castillo, Rafael C. “Chicano Literature.” Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies. New York, NY, online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 Mar. 2013), linking this legacy of cultural assimilation and erasure with the work of Mexican American writers and activists. He notes that “the tales, legends, and myths passed down orally manifested themselves in the […] stories of conflict and conquest, of love and rejection, of heroes and traitors, of tragedy and comedy [that became] enmeshed in the social, geographical, and environmental landscape that eventually became Chicano literature” (Castillo). Castillo’s perspective positions seminal works of Chicano literature, such Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima (1972), Villareal’s Pocho (1959), and Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street (1984), as acts of resistance against prejudice, discrimination, and erasure.

The concept of the “borderlands,” famously articulated by scholar Gloria Anzaldúa, a key figure in the Chicana feminist movement, describes both a geographical location and a hybrid Chicano identity that is constantly being negotiated. As Anzaldúa writes, “The U.S-Mexican border es una herida abierta […] the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture […] in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants” (Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, Aunt Lute Books, 1987). Through his protagonist, Miguel Chico, Islas personalizes the concept of the borderlands, using the character’s chronic illness and fluid sexuality to explore the pain, alienation, and unique perspective of living in a state of in-betweenness, a defining concern of Chicano literature.