In the Margins: Thresholds of Text and Identity in U.S.-Mexico Border Literature
My project links discussions of U.S.-Mexico border literature's emphasis on marginalized identity with the growing textual studies interest in the marginal, often-invisible processes which aid the production and shape the reception of books. The dissertation not only calls attention to textual instability, or the places where the differing and even opposing intentions of authors, publishers, and editors often become strikingly clear, but also focuses on the political, racial, ethnic, and social instabilities inherent in publishing the work of borderlands writers. It advocates and advances a sustained attentiveness to the conditions under which border literature can and does get produced. Authors discussed include María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Rolando Hinojosa, Jovita Gonzàlez and Eve Raleigh, Ana Castillo, Margarita Cota-Càrdenas, Aristeo Brito, Nash Candelaria, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, and Sandra Cisneros.
book history, border, Chicana/o, textual materialism, Literature in English, North America
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations