In Somos en escrito a posting by Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, Scholar in Residence/Chair, Department of Chicana/Chicano and Hemispheric Studies, Western New Mexico University, provides "Forging a literature of opposition on the outside: Chicano Literature and Critical Theory" a lengthy summary essay on the development of Chicano / Hispanic literature, quite applicable to Texas.
Extracted from Ortega y Gasca one finds "To my knowledge, the first symposium on Chicano literature and critical theory was held at Pan American University in Edinburg, Texas, on September 16, 1971. [Note the date.] Edward Simmen, professor of English there, organized the event and invited Tomás Rivera, Jose Reyna and me to present papers covering a spectrum of critical theory about Chicano literature, a barely emerging field then."
Modern Tejano literature as a body is sometimes bookended as Ramund Paredes and others point out by Texas-related Josephina Niggli's Mexican Village (a novel, 1945), but the larger corpus can be easily extended. Identifing Tejano literature within Chicano literature can sometimes be a challenge. The difficulty can be compared to identifing the Texas titles within the broader Cowboy titles. And it can be compared to the identifing of Texas titles within the broader Buffalo Soldiers titles. Armando Rendón's Somos en escrito and La Bloga and other sources do not always note a geographical distinction, intended of course to serve a wider audience, but they are good places to hunt Texana.
Other treatments abound but see also Paredes' "Teaching Chicano Literature: An Historical Approach"
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