At a time when universities across the world are increasingly offering undergraduate and graduate disciplines in Latina/o literature, or when academic conferences stress the identity marker “Latina/o,” where does that leave Chicana/o studies? Should “Latina/o” necessarily encompass “Chicana/o,” or can both terms coexist in their differences? In their impressive edited volume, William Orchard and Yolanda Padilla tackle complex questions such as these to consider the current state of Chicana/o literary studies. Using Chicano critic Ramón Saldívar's seminal text Chicano Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference (1990) as a foundation to address the present and future states of Chicana/o literature and criticism, the editors and contributors urge scholars to pick up where Saldívar left off to examine new trends in the Chicana/o novel and the significance of the relationship between the “expression” of a politicized Chicana/o identity and the “production” of that ideological frame in the literature (5).

In their expansive introduction, Orchard and Padilla address the need for new approaches to understanding Chicana/o narratives by expanding Saldívar's theoretical foundation while at the same time critically questioning its framework for the new realities of the twenty-first century. Insisting on the need to recognize Chicana/o literary studies at a moment when it risks becoming enveloped or overshadowed by Latina/o studies, the editors and contributors investigate new grounds of literary inquiry to break away from, or continue the conversation with, Saldívar's Chicano Narrative. Comprising ten chapters, the last of which culminates in a fascinating interview between Saldívar himself and the editors, the text offers a hopeful and necessary stance on the vitality of Chicana/o literary criticism.

The ten chapters featured in this volume are written by established scholars in the field of Chicana/o literary criticism, all of which pay homage to Chicano Narrative’s importance to the field, while simultaneously providing exciting new perspectives on a range of Chicana/o texts. The editors’ strategic organization of the chapters allows them to effectively converse with each other. In chapter 1, Jesse Alemán offers a discussion that positions Saldívar's work when recovery projects of Mexican American literary works were also taking place. Following that, David Luis-Brown's second chapter, “The Transnational Imaginaries of Chicano/a Studies and Hemispheric Studies: Polycentric and Centrifugal Methodologies,” insists on recognizing Chicana/o studies as a central core on which the newer fields of transnational and American studies are based. Chapters by Yolanda Padilla and Belinda Linn Rincón investigate understudied and well-known Mexican American and Chicana texts of the Mexican Revolution that give way for a more gendered and bordered understanding of this period of Mexican history. Chapter 5 by Olga L. Herrera takes up Sandra Cisneros's canonical works to argue for what she terms “Mexican Chicago” that accounts for Cisneros's narration of Mexican migration to the Mid-west. In a similar vein, Paula M. L. Moya's chapter, “Resisting the Interpretive Schema of the Novel Form: Rereading Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street,” argues for a new reading of Cisneros's work that highlights its inventive form as a hybrid text, unlike the critical tendency to designate it a novel. John Alba Cutler examines print culture as a context for understanding Chicana/o literary history. In keeping with innovative ways of approaching Chicana/o literature, Ralph E. Rodriguez's chapter traces Saldívar's influence on his own studies, yet calls on scholars to return to discussions of form and structure in our investigations of these literary works.

The final chapters conclude with Ramón Saldívar's personal reflections on the groundbreaking work for which he is known. In his chapter, “Chicano Narrative Now: Literary Discourses in an Age of Transnationalism,” Saldívar brilliantly challenges his own work's limitations for understanding Chicana/o literature in an increasingly globalized and transnational age. Finally, Orchard and Padilla beautifully conclude the volume with an interview conducted in July 2015, allowing Saldívar's thoughts on his literary influences and the state of Chicana/o literature and Chicana/o literary studies to weave the preceding chapters in a seamless fashion. In its efforts to broach complex questions on the space of Chicana/o literary studies within the move toward an increasingly transnational scope taken on by the fields of Latina/o and American studies, Bridges, Borders, and Breaks reminds us of the urgency and necessity of Chicana/o literary studies as a distinct discipline that takes on the many shifts and ruptures of politics and identity occurring in the twenty-first century.