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Subtitle: identity as performance in U.S. Latina/o fiction
By: Karen Christian.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Albuquerque
Language: eng
Number of pages: 189
Subjects: American fiction -- Hispanic American authors -- History and criticism.; American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Hispanic Americans -- Intellectual life.; Hispanic Americans in literature.; Group identity in literature.; Ethnic groups in literature.
Other titles: Show & tell
Description: "What makes John Rechy a Chicano writer? To be Latino, must writing have a touch of "magical realism"? Can one talk of U.S. Latina/o identity, considering the diversity of the Latina/o experience? Through the analysis of nine recent Latino/a novels, Karen Christian answers these and other questions, thereby adding a fresh, bold voice to the anti-essentialist debate surrounding ethnic and gender identity. Christian melds the theory of "performativity" with the latest scholarship on ethnicity and ethnic literature to create a framework for viewing identity as a continuous process that cannot be reduced to static categories. Through their narrative "performances," U.S. Latina/o writers and their characters move among communities and identities in an ongoing challenge to the notion of Latina/o essence. This study is also among the first to examine trends across the spectrum of cultures represented in U.S. Latina/o literature--from Chicano to Cuban to Puerto Rican to Dominican." -- Publisher's description
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 177-184) and index.
Table of contents: title: Between standing still and moving : reading U.S. Latina/o identity; title: Invisible Chicanos : gay and lesbian identities in the fiction of Sheila Ortiz Taylor and John Rechy; title: Identity as drag : performing gender and Cubanidad in The mambo kings play songs of love and The greatest performance; title: Invention of the ethnic self in Latina immigrant fiction : The line of the sun and How the García girls lost their accents; title: The "boom" in U.S. Latina/o fiction : performing magical realism in The love queen of the Amazon and So far from God.