Inner Borderlines: Visions of America Through the Eyes of Alejandro Morales

Inner Borderlines follows Alejandro Morales around Southern California as he explores a variety of topics that concern the Chicano/Latino community including: history, immigration, race relations, ethnicity, family, labor, education, religion, memory, gender, power, border, borderlands, and the fantastic.

Recognized by many as a pioneer of Chicano literature and precursor of bilingualism-he writes in Spanish and English-, Morales presents a unique vision of America, different from the image that the United States projects abroad.

Morales has authored several historical biographies in which he tells the fictional story of a character’s life using historical personages and events, bringing together his love for both history and writing. His works are examples of Miguel de Unamuno’s idea of Intra History, writing about the significance of the lives of ordinary people; of Linda Hutcheon’s theory of Historiographic Metafiction, the practice of writing aware of theory, history and fiction as strategies to rethink and reevaluate the past; and Irving Stone’s practice of writing biographical novels.
He considers that the sites between epistemological discourses have coalesced and are continuously intersecting. In reference to any one of his books Morales says “If you read my books like works of history, you are reading fiction; if you read my books like works of fiction, you are reading history.” He believes that creative, imaginative works are equal in importance as empirical works, perhaps even more important as catalysts for inquiry and change.