Miguel Méndez is a major literary figure in the world of Chicano fiction. His papers represent this important Chicano writer's life and his writings. He is a novelist and retired univerisity professor. Personal and biographical information, correspondence, articles, photos, audio, and video files are included in his collection. Méndez's writings consist of essays, novels, poetry and short stories. Original manuscripts of his most notable work titled Peregrinos de Aztlán are part of these papers.

Miguel Méndez is one of the leading writers in the field of Chicano literature. His work includes novels, short stories, essays and poetry. In his review of From Labor to Letters: A Novel Autobiography – Miguel Méndez (1997) Marco Portales describes him as the famous Yaqui-Chicano author, one of the few writers in this genre who like Tomas Rivera choose to write almost exclusively in Spanish, "continuing to spin out stories that he has published for many years wherever he has elicited interest, becoming in the process one of the first Mexican-American authors who has amply peopled Chicano literature with the stuff of his own existence and with characters, situations and stories he has imagined and experienced." Miguel Méndez has written over 57 literary works over the span of his career, writing his first novel at the age of 18.

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Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.