One of the most prolific and recognized young Mexican writers is Cristina Rivera-Garza. Carlos Fuentes described her novel Nadie me verá llorar, as one of the most notable literary works in this century. Born in Matamoros, Tamps., México, 1964, she completed her B.A. in Sociology at the UNAM in Mexico City (1987), an M.A. (1993) and Ph.D. in Latin-American History at the University of Houston (1995). She worked as an Associate Professor at San Diego State University where she taught Mexican History (1997-2000). She has won several Literary Awards and received the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 2000. The purpose of this research is to study the genre and gender borders evident in her works. a) In the literary genre aspect, the author’s works show an interrelation between the documented Historical narrative and the stories at the margin of that narrative. b) In the generic-sex aspect, the identities borders between the different sexualities (hetero and homo sexual), are blurred in the characters of this author. We study the author’s handling of concepts like gender, literary and sexual, and the ways she crosses boundaries to give shape to a body: a physical body that inhabits an unstable identity, and shows a performance that adapts itself in certain contexts; a historic body that dialogues with the official History and reclaims those stories that stayed at the margin of it. In the Introduction we will focus on the author’s bio-bibliography and elaborate, using existing theoretical concepts, on the literary genre and the theory of sexual orientation that will help explain her work. Chapter one is a general review of Rivera-Garza’s work and the context in which it takes place. Chapter two studies two of her short stories books, La guerra no importa (1991), and Ningún reloj cuenta esto (2001); Chapter three studies the sexual orientation and its relationship with gender identity in two novels, La cresta de Ilión (2002), and Lo anterior (2004). The final chapter is the conclusion. / text

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how Mexican author Cristina Rivera Garza (Matamoros, 1964) critiques gender in her novels. In an era of prolific publications dealing with gender, Rivera Garza's work stands out for its fresh critique of how socially gendered modes of behavior are "written" into the social code. I argue that she exposes latent and explicit gender prejudices and then literally and metaphorically rewrites gender expectations. Central to her objective is to quash binary divisions (masculine/feminine, male/female, privileged/marginalized) to create a space for nuanced, complex characters in her novels. Rivera Garza employs the metaphor of writing to weaken these gendered divisions and in doing so, she destabilizes the division between literary genres. / acase@tulane.edu

abstract: From Impossible Angles Towards Strategic Ones: Narratives of Death, Life, and Disability in La Muerte me Da and El Huesped The glamour of single-handedly overcoming adversity, sidestepping obstacles, or defying the odds makes for great mystery or adventure fiction, but fails to do justice (poetic or otherwise) to lives that are both physically and conceptually "marked" by more complex challenges. From a theoretical view, a similar desire to escape or maintain the perceived "dividing line" between fact and fiction, nature and nurture, mind and body, is confronted by a diverse set of human experiences, all of which have come to be defined, and continue to define themselves, along both sides of such a divide. Disability, typically viewed as an "emerging" branch of literary and cultural critique, is perhaps the most pervasive. Hidden under the covert language of the "grotesque", "monstrous", "doppelgänger", "freak", "eccentric" or "queer", disability has historically represented something other than itself. Two texts that attest to both the real and imagined possibilities of resignification and new modes of articulation surrounding disability are La muerte me da (2007) by Cristina Rivera Garza and El huésped (2006) by Guadalupe Nettel. From different points of departure, both texts offer a narrative approximation towards the disabled mind, body, and perceptual experience. In ways that are both similar and different, these narratives question one's perceived access to that which is otherwise understood to be the physically and conceptually "inaccessible" or "illegible" space of disability. Such approximations towards, and articulations of, the disability experience are processes that move, largely unnoticed, both within and beyond texts. As this construct continues to transform itself from both within and outside itself, disability acquires intellectual and practical value while requiring the "experts" in fields beyond the narrow scope of medicine, education, and rehabilitation to (re)consider their own approaches to, and apprehensions of, disability in order to redefine what or who is accessible or viable for literary and cultural debate. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Spanish 2014

Notre mémoire cherche à étudier la poétique de l’espace qui articule le roman Nadie me verá llorar publié en 1999 par l’écrivaine mexicaine contemporaine Cristina Rivera Garza. En inscrivant sa démarche romanesque dans la perspective postmoderne d’une nouvelle histoire culturelle, Rivera Garza dépeint un moment fondamental de l’histoire du Mexique allant de la fin du Porfiriato jusqu’aux lendemains de la Révolution mexicaine en l’incarnant dans le destin des laissés pour compte. Ce faisant, elle présente un texte où une multitude de récits se fondent et se confondent en un tout complexe où sont mis en perspective une série d’espaces de nature ambigüe. Notre analyse tâche d’expliquer cette interrelation des chronotopes de l’Histoire et du privé en tenant compte de son impact sur la structure narrative. En décrivant les différentes modalités des espaces évoqués dans l’oeuvre, nous nous intéressons au type de relations qui unit l’ensemble de ces espaces au grand temps de l’Histoire officielle mexicaine en démontrant que tous ces éléments sont régis par une politique hétérotopique qui lézarde le fini du discours officiel en y insérant un ensemble d’éléments qui le subvertissent. L’identification et la description de cette stratégie discursive est pertinente dans la mesure où elle offre un éclairage autre sur le roman et semble caractériser l’ensemble des oeuvres de Cristina Rivera Garza. / This thesis studies the poetics of space in which the novel Nadie me verá llorar, published in 1999 and written by Cristina Rivera Garza, is articulated. Locating her novelistic project in the postmodernist perspective of a new cultural History, Rivera Garza outlines an essential moment of the history of the Mexican Revolution, from the so-called Porfiriato until the end of the Revolution. That being said, this author presents a text where a diversity of stories are founded and confounded in a complex whole in which a series of ambiguous spaces is put into perspective. Our analysis tries to explain the interaction between the chronotopes of the History, as a public space, and the private sphere to account for its impact on the narrative structure. As we describe the different modalities of space evoked in the novel, we are interested in the relations linking the spatial ensemble to the official historic time, demonstrating that all those elements are ruled by a heterotopic policy which fissures the official history, inserting elements that are capable of subverting it. The identification and description of such a peculiar discursive strategy allows us the capacity to see this novel from a different perspective. Furthermore, this discursive strategy seems to be characteristic of all of Rivera Garza’s novelistic work. / El presente estudio analiza la poética del espacio que articula la novela Nadie me verá llorar, publicada en 1999 por la escritora mexicana Cristina Rivera Garza. Al inscribir su proyecto novelesco en la perspectiva posmoderna de una nueva historia cultural, Rivera Garza esboza un momento fundamental de la historia mexicana, el comprendido entre el Porfiriato y el final de la Revolución, ubicándolo en el destino de los desquiciados. Dicho lo anterior, la autora presenta un texto donde una variedad de relatos se funden y se confunden en un todo complejo en el que se somete a escrutinio una serie de espacios de naturaleza ambigua. Nuestro análisis trata de explicar esta interrelación de los cronotopos de la Historia (constructo oficial de acontecimientos, legitimado desde el poder) y de lo privado (memoria íntima y personal de los individuos) para dar cuenta de su impacto en la estructura narrativa. Al describir las diferentes modalidades de los espacios evocados en la obra, este estudio analiza el tipo de relaciones que une el conjunto de esos espacios con el gran tiempo de la Historia mexicana oficial, demostrando que todos esos elementos son regidos por una política heterotópica que fisura la homogeneidad del discurso oficial al insertar elementos que lo subvierten. Identificar y describir dicha estrategia discursiva es pertinente ya que proyecta una luz diferente sobre la novela, siendo además una estrategia recurrente en las obras firmadas por Rivera Garza.