Now more than ever, Latino/a studies is on the brink of change. From invoking the X to in Latino/a studies programs nationwide to having the tough conversations that 1960s and 1970s Chicano nationalists ignored regarding Indigenous and Black Latinos/as/x, the field is shifting. Permissible Narratives: The Promise of Latino/a Literature by Christopher González and Mestizos Come Home! Making and Claiming Mexican American Identity by Robert Con Davis-Undiano are two vastly different texts that continue the conversation on the future of Latino/a studies.
Permissible Narratives is an astute study of how readership has contended with the development of Latino/a literature over the last fifty-plus years. The book is part of the Cognitive Approaches to Culture Series from Ohio University Press and is unique because it employs a cognitive narratology framework to examine what is permissible in Latino/a narrative and what is foreclosed as a result of reading identity politics into narratives...