Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-213) and index.

"The American Congo" and the national symbolic -- Negotiating cultural memory in the aftermath of the Mexican-American war : nineteenth-century Mexican American testimonials and The squatter and the don -- Reading the corpus delicti : Tomás Rivera's Earth and the Chicano body in the public sphere -- The institutionalization of Latino literature in the academy : Cabeza de Vaca's Castaways and the crisis of legitimation -- Practices of freedom : the body re-membered in contemporary Latino writing -- Democracy's graveyard : dead citizenship and the Latino body.