멕시코계 미국인의 식민주의와 인종주의 역사 읽기

Reading the Mexican-Americans' Colonial History and Racism in José Antonio Villarreal's Pocho

José Antonio Villarreal‘s Pocho is the first modern Mexican-American novel and occupies an important place in Chicano literary history. After the publication in 1959, some literary critics criticized this novel because of its literary shortcomings. The defenders of the Chicano Movement also condemned Villarreal and his novel for being too assimilated. And other critics evaluated this novel as a Chicano version of the Western bildungsroman, or regarded the protagonist, Richard, as the American Adam. This estimation undervalues Pocho as an excessively assimilationist novel or a poorly second one without considering political, historical, and racial realties. So this paper aims to seek out the right estimation and understanding of this novel, focusing on political and historical realities, and racial power relationship related with characters and events in the novel. Section Ⅱ and Ⅲ explain the historical and political backgrounds that force Mexicans to move into the United States through the story of Juan Rubio, the protagonist's father. And these sections discuss their lives in this country suffered from the same colonial realities as those in Mexico. Section Ⅳ reveals the Americans' distorted attitudes to racial difference and racial discrimination against the Mexican Americans, focusing on Richard's awareness of the discrimination and inequality that is diffused everywhere. This section also shows Richard's frustration, that is, one of second-generation Mexican- Americans as in-between subjects that don't assimilate into the US dominant culture nor follow the traditional Mexican culture.