Rubén Martínez, a poet, performer, and journalist from Los Angeles, represents a new generation of Chicano/Latino writers whose cultural production generally focuses on Southern California. Yet, in his writings he also fuses historical, political, and cultural discourses in order to depict the oppressive conditions that Chicano/Latino communities face in the United States, Mexico, and El Salvador. Martínez is concerned with the representation of marginalized communities that have been displaced, because these communities produce cultural and social dissidents who serve as the voices of the underdogs. Martínez's writings enunciate the voice of the Chicano/Latino community in Los Angeles, which has historically resided in the center of the city but has occupied a peripheral space economically, politically, and culturally. Thus, his writings, emerging from the arena of cultural politics, contest the hegemonic cultural practices that have traditionally excluded his...