This dissertation addresses the rhetoric of deficiency that frames Latina/o students as lacking with regard to education. This dissertation begins by examining the cultural deficit model entrenched in colonial narratives of history that justify unequal access to resources in the US. I argue that the reimagining of the pejorative trope of 'pocho' by reconnecting it with its etymological root pochteca provides a trope of resistance to deficiency rhetoric, and a trope that embodies rhetorical strategies for Latina/o students navigating academic institutions. Additionally, this dissertation furthers the advocacy of culturally relevant reading and writing assignments and practices, while at the same time arguing that the discursive productions responding to culturally relevant writing demonstrate rhetorical strategies. The analysis of a student publication that responds to and integrates dichos provides a site of analysis where students identify rhetorical strategies that help them navigate obstacles related to education. The use of Twitter by a predominantly Latina/o summer bridge program provides an additional site of analysis where the writing of students in digital spaces allows them to perform latinidad, and create support networks that help them succeed in school. The pedagogical chapter of this dissertation analyzes the Arizona House Bill 2281 and the rhetoric that frames the Tucson Unified School District's Mexican American Studies program as racist and anti-American; following this analysis come suggestions for incorporating culturally relevant aspects of the TUSD MAS curriculum into rhetoric and composition curriculum.

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Paraíso, Caída y Regeneración en tres novelas chicanas is a detailed literary analysis of three well-known chicano novels: Pocho, Bless Me, Ultima and Peregrinos de Aztlán. The approach is the utilization of the "paradise-fall-regeneration" pattern as a means to study the three stages of the principal characters' development. By identifying and characterizing this process within each of these novels, this writer acquires a better understanding as to what constitutes the characters' self-perception as well as their relation to the reality around them. This fictitious representation of Chicano life in turn sheds light on the three novelists' perceptions of what Chicano reality is and how it is reflected in their works. Pocho is a clear manifestation of the "fall" from Mexican traditional culture. The old characters* geographic and spiritual removal from what they consider the paradisal state and the slow eroding process of their cultural system is what the novel is about. Although the characters make a vain attempt at the preservation of these values, the defeat is clearly manifested in their children's acculturation, especially in the protagonist, Richard. At the end of the novel there is no indication that the characters attain some sort of regeneration. On the contrary, there is only chaos, a disintegrated marriage, and a psychologically disoriented protagonist. Bless Me, Ultima offers a much broader view of the "paradise-fall-regeneration” pattern and appears on various planes. Culture, from the protagonist's point of view, is not seen as conflict or as a fall but as an affirmation of cultural roots. Paradisal remnants of the New Mexican heritage are still manifest in contemporary life; thus, the fall is no more than the protagonist's coming of age. This fallen state is temporary and at the end of the novel the protagonist gathers all the knowledge acquired through his life experience and builds a positive world view. This new stage in life is what represents regeneration. Moreover, the incursion into the ancestral roots of New Mexican culture and the knowledge acquired in the writing of the novel is in itself an act of regeneration for the author. In this manner, the regenerative state in Bless Me, Ultima is also represented outside its fictitious boundaries. Peregrinos de Aztlán is by far the most complex of the three novels. It also represents the extreme "fall" of man. There is no paradise for the characters but a continuous degeneration of humanity on every conceivable plane. For the characters there is no salvation and human life can well be considered hell. Paradise is characterized by dreams and illusions which serve to help tolerate the dehumanizing existence of the characters. The regenerative state, consequently, is non-existent within the world of Peregrinos de Aztlán. Nevertheless, the work itself is an act of regeneration for the author and for the Chicano Movement because it is an act of rebellion. Méndez exposes a realistic condition of the two societies in which Chicanos live and offers the Chicano perspective of himself and his circumstance. His novel's importance is as great as Rudy Acuña's Occupied America in the area of the history of Chicanos in the Southwest. This dissertation has been written entirely in Spanish.

Testing the Seams of the American Dream: Minority Literature and Film in the Early Cold War delineates the concept of the liberal tolerance agenda in early Cold War. The liberal tolerance message of the U.S. government, the Democratic Party, and others endorsed racial tolerance and envisioned the possibility of a future free from racism and inequality. Filmmakers in often disseminated a liberal message similar to that of the politicians in the form of “race problem” films. My shows how these films and the liberal tolerance agenda as a whole promises racial equality to the racial minority in exchange for hard work, patriotism, education, and a belief in the majority culture. My first chapter, “Washing White the Racial Subject: Hollywood’s First Black Problem Film,” performs a close reading of Arthur Laurents 1946 play Home of the Brave, which features a Jewish American protagonist, in conjunction with a reading of the 1949 film version, which has an African American protagonist. The differences between the two texts reveal the slippages in the liberal tolerance agenda and signal the inability of filmmakers to envision racial equality on the big screen. “The American Institution and the Racial Subject,” my second chapter, discusses the 1949 film Pinky as well as Américo Paredes’s George Washington Gómez and Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter. All of these works suggests that the attainment of education promises entry into the mainstream by racial minorities, yet Paredes and Sone question this process by interpreting it as resulting in the dual segregation of their protagonists. My third chapter, “Earning and Cultural Capital: The Work that Determines Place,” looks at the promise that with hard work anyone can attain the American Dream. I show how the 1951 film Go for Broke!, Ann Petry’s The Street, and José Antonio Villarreal’s Pocho work to dispel this American myth. My final chapter, “The Regrets of Dissent: Blacklists and the Race Question,” examines the 1954 film Salt of the Earth alongside Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go and John Okada’s No-No Boy to reveal the dangerous mixture of race and dissent in this era. / text