| The late Dr. Americo Paredes, in addition to his exemplary scholastic contributions to Mexican American scholarship, has achieved critical acclaim for his fiction. While scholars proclaim Paredes' fictional texts, which were written and set amidst a racially intensified social structure during the first half of the twentieth century, as remarkable portrayals of South Texas life, this paper calls for a "re-envisioning" of his literary works. Rather than a mere portrayal of South Texas society, using Paredes' most influential novel, George Washington Gomez, I explore the work's autobiographical content and assert that, because of its factual basis, scholars re-access his fiction as a means of gaining a new historical perspective on South Texas culture. |
