“To(o) Queer the Chican@s: Disrupting Genders in the Post-Borderlands" examines representations of non-normative genders and sexualities in Mexican American literature. / text

This work focuses on Chican@ identity in academia and uses CRT counterstory to address topics of cultural displacement, assimilation, the American Dream, and ethnic studies. This research considers where the field of rhetoric and composition currently stands in terms of preparedness to serve a growing Chican@ undergraduate and graduate student population. Through counterstory, I offer strategies that more effectively serve students from non-traditional backgrounds in various spaces and practices such as the composition classroom, faculty mentoring, and programmatic requirements such as second language proficiency exams. Since rhetoric and composition can confront structurally and historically specific racisms--e.g., segregation, lack of access for the racial minority to higher education, ethnocentric curricula--embedded in our field, then we, as teachers, students, and administrators, can strategize ways to achieve social justice in academia for historically marginalized groups. My dissertation is focused on Chican@ undergraduate and graduate students because this is the fastest growing population in the academy and is a group with which I feel I can draw upon my cultural intuition; however, the critical race theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological strategies I make use of in my project can be adapted to assist other historically marginalized groups in academia.

Den här uppsatsen undersöker gestaltningar av rumslighet i Yxta Maya Murrays roman Locas och i Helena María Viramontes novell ”The Cariboo Cafe”. Utifrån en lefebvriansk förståelse av det sociala rummets produktion görs en feministisk, postkolonial läsning av rummets betydelse i texterna. Med utgångspunkt i detta teoretiska ramverk diskuteras tematiseringen av plats, rum och identitet i berättelserna. Vidare används en narratologisk analys av texternas användning av deixis och fokalisering för att visa hur språket fungerar som en granskande skildring av olika platsers och rums villkor. En sådan läsning tillåter texterna att träda fram som avslöjare av specifika maktordningar och som kritik mot dessa. / This essay examines the spatial descriptions in Yxta Maya Murray’s novel Locas and in Helena María Viramontes’ short story “The Cariboo Café”. Based on Henri Lefebvre’s understanding of the production of social space, a post-colonial, feminist reading of the texts’ spaces is executed. Rooted in this theoretical framework, the texts’ thematization of space, place and identity is discussed. Furthermore, a narratological analysis is added to the investigation through a scrutiny of the usage of deixis and focalization. It is shown how the usage of language in the texts functions to further expose different bodies’ divergent access to different spaces. This reading permits the texts to appear both as revealers of specific power systems, and as critics of them.

abstract: This dissertation examines how contemporary ideologies of race and “colorblind” discourse are reproduced, deployed, and reimagined in Mexican American literature. It demonstrates that the selected narratives foreground inconsistencies in colorblind ideologies and problematize the instability and perennial reformulation of race definitions in the United States. This study also contributes to the discussion of racial formation in Mexican American literary studies from 1970 to 2010. Chapter One provides the critical and literary context of Mexican American literature from 1970 to 2010. Chapter Two details the process of racial formation in the United States according to Michael Omi and Howard Winant. Simultaneously, this chapter describes the theoretical framework and concepts of experience and epistemic privilege, mestizaje, and intercultural relations as offered respectively by Paula M. L. Moya, Rafael Pérez-Torres, and Marta E. Sánchez. Chapter Three offers an analysis of racial discourse and assimilation via two autobiographical texts: Oscar Acosta’s The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972) and Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982). Chapter Four examines the colorblind racial ideology in two texts by Mexican American women authors: Erlinda Gonzales-Berry’s Paletitas de guayaba (1991) and Mona Ruiz’s Two Badges: The Lives of Mona Ruiz (1998). Chapter Five explores the rearticulation of colorblind racial discourse in the “postracial” United States. In this chapter, we examine three works of speculative fiction: The Rag Doll Plagues (1992) by Alejandro Morales, Texas 2077: A Futuristic Novel (1998) by Carlos Miralejos, and Lunar Braceros 2125-2148 (2009) by Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita. By combining theories from Chicana/o Studies, Critical Race and Gender Studies, and Cultural Studies in my textual analysis, my dissertation challenges notions of contemporary colorblind or postracial ideologies that regard present day discussions of race as counterproductive to U.S. race relations. [Text in Spanish] / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation International Letters and Cultures 2017

This dissertation privileges Chican@ rhetorics in order to challenge a single History of Rhetoric, as well as to challenge Chican@s to formulate our rhetorical practices through our own epistemologies. Chapter One works in three ways: (1) it points to how a single History of Rhetoric is implemented, (2) it begins to answer Victor Villanueva's call to "Break precedent!" from a singly History, and (3) it lays groundwork for the three-prong heuristic of "embodied storying," which acts as a lens for Chican@ rhetorics. Chapter Two uses embodied storying to look at how Chican@s are produced through History and how Chican@s produce histories. By analyzing how Spanish colonizers, contemporary scholars/publishers, and Chican@s often disembody indigenous codices, this chapter calls for rethinking how we practice codices. In order to do so, this chapter retells various stories about Malinche to show how Chican@s already privilege bodies in Chican@ stories in and beyond codices. Chapter Three looks at cartographic practices in the construction, un-construction, and deconstruction of bodies, places, and spaces in the Americas. Because indigenous peoples practice mapping by privileging bodies who inhabit/practice spaces, this chapter shows how colonial maps rely on place-based conceptions of land in order to create imperial borders and rely on space-based conceptions in order to ignore and remove indigenous peoples from their lands. Chapter Four looks at foodways as a practice of rhetoric, identity, community, and space. Using personal, familial, and community knowledge to discuss Mexican American food practices, this chapter argues that foodways are rhetorical in that they affect and are affected by Chican@ identities. In this way, food practices can challenge the conception of rhetoric as being solely attached to text and privilege the body. Finally, Chapter Five looks at how Chican@ rhetorics and embodied storying can affect the field(s) of rhetoric and writing. I ask three specific questions: (1) How can we use embodied storying in histories of rhetoric? (2) How can we use embodied storying in Chican@ rhetorics? (3) How can we use embodied storying in our pedagogy?