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LITERATURES OF THE AMERICAS

Geographies of
Girlhood in
US Latina Writing
Decolonizing Spaces and Identities
Andrea Fernández-García
Literatures of the Americas

Series Editor
Norma E. Cantú
Trinity University
San Antonio, TX, USA
This series seeks to bring forth contemporary critical interventions within
a hemispheric perspective, with an emphasis on perspectives from Latin
America. Books in the series highlight work that explores concerns in lit-
erature in different cultural contexts across historical and geographical
boundaries and also include work on the specific Latina/o realities in the
United States. Designed to explore key questions confronting contem-
porary issues of literary and cultural import, Literatures of the Americas is
rooted in traditional approaches to literary criticism but seeks to include
cutting-edge scholarship using theories from postcolonial, critical race,
and ecofeminist approaches.

More information about this series at


http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14819
Andrea Fernández-García

Geographies
of Girlhood in US
Latina Writing
Decolonizing Spaces and Identities
Andrea Fernández-García
University of Oviedo
Oviedo, Spain

Literatures of the Americas


ISBN 978-3-030-20106-7 ISBN 978-3-030-20107-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20107-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover image: © Tetra Images, LLC/Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements

As this study is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation completed


at the University of Oviedo, it could not have been made possible with-
out the insightful academic guidance and extraordinary generosity of
my supervisors, Dr. Esther Álvarez López and Dr. Emilia María Durán
Almarza. I am also profoundly grateful to Dr. Maria Herrera-Sobek
for devoting her precious time to reading and commenting on various
draft chapters. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their con-
structive comments on the initial manuscript. I am also grateful to the
University of Oviedo for providing scholarship funding to carry out this
study. I must also particularly acknowledge the funding provided by
the “Intersecciones: Literaturas, Culturas y Teorías Contemporáneas”
Research Group (FC-15-GRUPIN14-068) and must thank its coordi-
nator, Dr. Isabel Carrera Suárez, and the rest of its members for being
supportive and generous throughout. Some of the research for this
book also comes from the research project “MultipliCities. Encuentros
Incorporados y Conocimientos Alternativos: Habitar y Crear la Ciudad”
(FFI2013-45642), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and
Competitiveness, to which I am also grateful. I am similarly thankful to
the members of the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, where I conducted part of my
doctoral research thanks to a Fulbright scholarship, for all the encour-
agement and the stimulating conversations that helped me to sharpen my
insights. I extend my acknowledgements to Dr. Maria Cristina Pons and
Dr. Maria Esther Quintana Millamoto for their input and support of this

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

book. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the team at Palgrave Macmillan


for urging on the project and for their patience and help. I also wish to
acknowledge the generosity of Odisea: A Journal of English Studies and
Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies in granting permission to reprint
sections of Chaps. 3 and 5.
Additional thanks go to my friends, who have provided a constant
source of inspiration, support, and friendship. I would like to express
my warmest thanks to Irene, Juanjo, Eva, and Mónica for always being
there for me. Moreover, I am grateful to Abi, Jose, and Melissa for com-
ing into my life recently and shaking it up with their crazy laughter, joy,
and positiveness. I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends
at the University of Oviedo for their support and the nice moments we
have spent together. I am also thankful to Sal, Linda, and the rest of the
friends I met in California for being like a second family to me.
Finally, I wish to thank my parents, María Flor and Arturo, for their
love and belief in me. It is with love and gratitude that I dedicate this
book to them.
Contents

1 Introduction 1
Works Cited 8

2 Latina Girlhood: Questions of Identity and


Representation 9
2.1 Latina Girls: A Growing Gap Between Population and
Representation 9
2.2 Cultural Scripts for Latina Girls: Good Girls vs. Bad Girls 14
2.3 The Latina Bildungsroman as a Decolonial Space:
Unearthing Unheard Voices, Decolonizing and
Reconstructing Paradigms and Concepts 18
2.4 Decolonizing Spaces and Identities 28
Works Cited 44

3 Space of Flows vs. Space of Places: Negotiating


the Paradoxes of a Global Age in Julia Alvarez’s
Return to Sender 53
3.1 Globalization and Its Contradictory Paths: Opening
and Closing Borders 53
3.2 Open Borders, Exclusion, and Cultural Confusion:
Dilemmas of Identity and Belonging 58
3.3 Reconceptualizing Identities: Toward a Critical
Cosmopolitan Perspective 67
Works Cited 80

vii
viii CONTENTS

4 Life on the Mexico-US Border: Femininity,


Transborderism, and the Reinscription of Boundaries
in Norma E. Cantú’s Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood
en la Frontera 87
4.1 Not Just a Trope: La Frontera as a Real-Life Space 87
4.2 Inscribing Femininity in La Frontera 97
4.3 Transcending and Reinscribing the Border’s Materiality 112
Works Cited 122

5 The Barrio as a Hybrid Space: Growing Up Between


Nationalism and Feminism in Mary Helen Ponce’s
Hoyt Street: An Autobiography 127
5.1 The Chicanx Barrio: A Space of Pain and Pleasure 127
5.2 Pacoima Talks Back: Contesting Established
Narratives of the Chicanx Barrio 132
5.3 How About Barrio Women?: A Critique of Gender
Asymmetries in the Community 141
Works Cited 151

6 Continuities and Discontinuities Between Home


and School: Toward a Multi-layered Understanding
of Social Spaces in Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was
Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman 155
6.1 Socializing New People in New Settings 155
6.2 Daily Migrations: Minding the Gap Between Home
and School 160
6.3 Destabilizing Demarcations Between Home and School:
Mingling Social Practices, Values, and Meanings 172
Works Cited 181

7 Conclusions 185
Works Cited 191

Index 193
CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This study was born out of an interest in a segment of the US population


that, despite its increasing demographic growth, remains understudied
and marginalized in scholarly literature, popular culture, and in US soci-
ety at large: Latina girls.1 This study seeks to prove, however, that there is
a discursive space where their daily lives and negotiations are given promi-
nence. US Latina literature, and in particular the genre of the Bildungsro-
man or coming-of-age narrative, brings to the fore, more often than not,
Latina girls on their way to adulthood. For this reason, the focus of this
book is placed on a series of Bildungsromane that trace the development
of four girls. The key texts chosen for this study are Julia Alvarez’s Return
to Sender (2009), Norma E. Cantú’s Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en
la Frontera (2015/1995), Mary Helen Ponce’s Hoyt Street: An Autobi-
ography (1993), and Esmeralda Santiago’s first two memoirs When I Was
Puerto Rican (2006/1993) and Almost a Woman (2012/1998). These
novels have been selected for two main reasons: first, because they allow
interrogation of the legacies of colonial modernity, and second because
each is set in a different spatiotemporal context. In all five texts, the char-
acters negotiate vexing phenomena that are rooted in colonial structures
of power, such as undocumented immigration, displacement, and racial
and gender discrimination, opening avenues for an exploration and cri-
tique of how colonial structures of power shape the girls’ experiences.
On the other hand, the contexts in which the texts are set include rural
Vermont in the 2000s, the Mexico-US border between the 1930s and

© The Author(s) 2020 1


A. Fernández-García, Geographies of Girlhood in US
Latina Writing, Literatures of the Americas,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20107-4_1
2 A. FERNÁNDEZ-GARCÍA

1960s, a Chicanx (or Mexican American) neighborhood in Los Angeles


County during the first half of the twentieth century and New York in the
1960s.2 The particularities of each context will enable a richer and more
diverse analysis of girlhood experiences.
The aim of this study is, then, to analyze the psychological and phys-
ical growth of the characters portrayed in these narratives in an attempt
to offer a variegated picture of girlhood experiences that can fill in the
discursive gap created by sheer neglect. These different life stories will be
read using spaces and places as hermeneutical tools. This methodological
choice is predicated upon two main reasons. The first has to do with the
bidirectional link that much geography scholarship establishes between
subject formation and spatiality, which Latinx studies scholar Mary Pat
Brady summarizes as follows: “Identity emerges in relation to spatial-
ity, to the on-going production of places, to the buried and entangled
relationship between time and space” (2006, 152). Thus, she argues,
“making identities is integral to making places; places get made par-
tially through identity-making activities” (2006, 152). Identities, there-
fore, evolve through the experiences involved as we encounter new spaces,
which are in turn shaped by our performances and negotiations. The sec-
ond reason is related to the little scholarly attention that has been given
to children and spatiality, a gap in geography that created conditions
for the emergence of the increasing but still discreet area of children’s
geographies. This field, as geographers Sarah Holloway and Gill Valen-
tine argue, deals mainly, but not exclusively, with how children’s identi-
ties and lives are reconstituted in and through everyday spaces such as
the school, the home, and the city, showing also how their negotiations
feedback onto those places (2000, 9). This book is, therefore, a multi-
disciplinary study where the aforementioned interests and identified gaps
are addressed, engaging with and contributing to ongoing discussions in
areas as varied as US Latina literature, girls’ studies, gender studies, or
children’s geographies, among others.
Chapter 2, “Latina Girls: Questions of Identity and Representation,”
which offers a conceptual and methodological framework for the subse-
quent analyses, opens with a section that presents the paradox surround-
ing the representation of Latina girls: How their discursive invisibilization
is at odds with their increasing demographic growth and the growing
popularity and ubiquity of female youth in and across a wide array of dis-
ciplines and cultural practices, which gave way to the field of girls’ studies.
1 INTRODUCTION 3

On the other hand, it offers a brief overview of the most common pat-
terns for representing Latina girls in scholarly work, television, cinema,
and in children’s and young adult literature by US Latina writers.
The second section gives an account of the patriarchal discourses
that the characters discussed in this book have to negotiate: marian-
ismo, machismo, and malinchismo. I will explain how they originated and
describe the gender roles that they prescribe for women so as to gain a
better grasp of the discourses that shape the characters’ growing-up expe-
riences.
The third section begins by outlining the reasons why US Latina
authors have relied mostly on the Bildungsroman to visibilize the daily
lives and negotiations of Latina youth. In addition, I theorize the Bil-
dungsroman by Latina writers as a discursive space that emerges from a
dialogue between the colonial and the postcolonial, which in turn brings
about the decolonization and redefinition of paradigms and concepts.
This conceptualization is based on decolonial and border thinking, an
epistemology and ethics that resists the homogenizing forces of the uni-
versal or globalized culture. In this sense, I will particularly draw on
Emma Pérez’s concept of the “decolonial imagery” (1999) to elucidate
the potential of this literary expression to rethink dominant paradigms in
an attempt to claim neglected subjectivities and histories. This entails the
decolonization of not only a patriarchal and Eurocentric literary tradition,
but also the Western male-ordered notions of subjectivity and spatiality it
conveys.
Chapter 2 closes with a more detailed account of decolonial and bor-
der thinking, the paradigm through which identities and spaces are inter-
preted and made sense of in this study. Born in Latinx and Latin Ameri-
can academic circles, this epistemology and ethics has as one of its main
goals to foreground the continuity of the past colonial experience within
present-day global racial hierarchies. In this sense, the main argument is
that coloniality is still an intrinsic part of capitalist world power systems,
as it is based on the imposition of a racial/ethnic hierarchy on popula-
tions, a structure with its origins in the “idea that [the] colonizer is eth-
nically and cognitively superior to the colonized” (Castro-Gómez in Gil
Araújo 2010, 190). This section shows how this logic of power is mani-
fested through different current phenomena that affect the lives of Latinxs
in the United States, namely racialization, discrimination, exploitation,
and, more recently, the signing of an executive order to build a physi-
cal wall between Mexico and the United States. In this respect, special
4 A. FERNÁNDEZ-GARCÍA

attention will be directed to the exclusivist and rigid notions of identities


and spaces underlying these exclusionary acts. On the other hand, and
in line with decolonial and border thinking’s efforts to “foreground the
force and creativity of knowledges subalternized during a long process
of colonization of the planet” (Mignolo 2000, 13), this section provides
an overview of the alternative views of identities and spaces upheld by
decolonial thinkers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Chela Sandoval, and Wal-
ter Mignolo. In this regard, attention will also be paid to some spatial
concepts that, although not born within the paradigm of decoloniality,
contribute to decolonizing and redefining dominant spatial narratives.
Through an examination of concepts and tools such as “mestiza con-
sciousness,” “differential consciousness,” “critical cosmopolitanism,” and
“a progressive sense of place,” emphasis will be placed on a more ambigu-
ous, dialectical, and inclusive view of subjectivities and places.3
The novels included in this book portray a plurality of spaces, such
as the space of the nation, the Mexico-Texas transborder region, the Chi-
canx neighborhood, and the home-school binary. I will consider the texts
in relation to these spaces and the prominence that they have in each of
the novels. Thus, I shall organize the analysis of the texts following these
different spatial categories, going from the most general to the most spe-
cific; I consider the nation and the home-school binary to be located at
the extremes of this spectrum. I include the Mexico-Texas borderlands
and the barrio between these polarized categories.
Accordingly, in Chapter 3, entitled “Space of Flows vs. Space of Places:
Negotiating the Paradoxes of a Global Age in Julia Alvarez’s Return to
Sender,” I shall start my analysis with Alvarez’s novel. Here, I analyze
the way Mari and Tyler, an undocumented Mexican girl and an Anglo-
American boy, reconstitute their identities in and through the space of the
US nation and the state of Vermont. The first section, “Globalization and
Its Contradictory Paths: Opening and Closing Borders,” introduces the
complex and contradictory reality that characterizes the context in which
the protagonists negotiate their identities: How the continuous immi-
gration of undocumented Mexican workers to fill jobs in Vermont dairy
farms coexists with racism and extreme forms of patriotism that believe
in the “true” essence of places. In order to enable a better grasp of these
opposing dynamics, this section will take a close look at Manuel Castells’
spatial division between “space of flows” and “space of places” (1996),
focusing on the competing view of places it puts forward. Section 3.2,
1 INTRODUCTION 5

“Open Borders, Exclusion, and Cultural Confusion: Dilemmas of Iden-


tity and Belonging,” deals with Mari’s feelings of exclusion and the dilem-
mas of identity and belonging encountered by both characters. In this
regard, I examine, on the one hand, how the nation’s nativism and the
continuous recruitment of undocumented Mexican immigrants impact on
Mari’s sense of place, emphasizing her difficulties at determining where
she belongs. On the other hand, I explore the way Tyler straddles between
his wish to keep his farm afloat with the help of undocumented workers
and the nativist discourses that deem the practice of hiring them as antipa-
triotic. Lastly, Sect. 3.3, which I entitled “Reconceptualizing Identities:
Towards a Critical Cosmopolitan Perspective,” examines how, in the pro-
cess of reconciling the conflicting positions referred to above, Mari and
Tyler embrace the paradigm of critical or decolonial cosmopolitanism,
reconceptualizing their identities and the spaces they inhabit.
Chapter 4, “Life on the Mexico-U.S. Border: Femininity, Trans-
borderism, and the Reinscription of Boundaries in Norma E. Cantú’s
Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera,” traces Nena’s com-
ing of age in the Mexico-Texas borderlands. The first section, “Not Just
a Trope: La Frontera as a Real Life Space,” brings attention to the fact
that, other than being a metaphor for hybrid and multiple identities, the
Mexican American borderlands is also a real place inhabited by real peo-
ple. Chicanx border literature in general and Canícula in particular are
presented as discursive spaces where this materiality is very well rendered.
Then, I move on to identify those aspects of this materiality that have
received less attention in the scholarship on Canícula: femininity and
the destabilization and reinscription of boundaries. The second section,
“Inscribing Femininity in La Frontera,” analyzes the various gendered
performances deployed in the texts. This will include a look at patriarchal
archetypes such as the solterona, the devoted and self-sacrificing mother,
the virgin, and the treacherous whore. In this regard, I will look into
the way Nena plays out a mestiza consciousness when negotiating these
different roles, focusing on how she alternatively embraces and contests
them. Finally, the section “Transcending and Reinscribing the Border’s
Materiality” examines those episodes in which the border’s significance is
challenged and those in which it is reinscribed. This will involve a consid-
eration, on the one hand, of instances when national and cultural demar-
cations are blurred and, on the other hand, moments when the geopolit-
ical efficacy of the border is made visible through deportations and other
acts of exclusion.
6 A. FERNÁNDEZ-GARCÍA

Chapter 5, “The Barrio as a Hybrid Space: Growing Up Between


Nationalism and Feminism in Mary Helen Ponce’s Hoyt Street: An Auto-
biography,” analyzes how Mary Helen negotiates her identity in and
through the barrio of Pacoima. Section 5.1, entitled “The Chicanx Bar-
rio: A Space of Pain and Pleasure,” provides an overview of the repre-
sentation of the barrio in Chicanx literature, with an emphasis on the
dialogue between positive and negative images that characterizes most
depictions of this urban space. Ponce’s novel is presented as an example
of this ambiguity, even if scholarship has concentrated on the feelings of
communal love, solidarity, and happiness that the author attributes to life
in Pacoima. Thus, this section emphasizes the largely dismissed gender
dimension of her novel, pointing toward a more complicated portrayal
in which Chicano cultural nationalism and Chicana feminism have left an
imprint. Section 5.2, “Pacoima Talks Back: Contesting Established Narra-
tives of the Chicanx Barrio,” draws on barriological discourse to analyze,
on the one hand, Ponce’s promotion of the cultural practices that stir up
community pride and a sense of belonging in the narrator and her neigh-
bors and, on the other hand, her critique of the structures of dominant
urbanism intended to wipe out the barrio. Section 5.3, “How About Bar-
rio Women? A Critique of Gender Asymmetries in the Community,” con-
centrates on the gender injustices prevalent in the community, and hence
it takes a close look at the way machismo and marianismo define roles and
relationships in Pacoima. This section closes with an analysis of Ponce’s
alternation between seemingly conflicting ideologies and sentiments by
resorting to Chela Sandoval’s “differential consciousness,” shedding light
on the complex identity that she acquires as she grows up in the barrio.
Finally, Chapter 6, “Continuities and Discontinuities Between Home
and School: Towards a Multi-layered Understanding of Social Spaces in
Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman,”
examines how Negi’s identity negotiations constitute and are reconsti-
tuted in the microspaces of the home and the school, with special atten-
tion to the complicated tensions and connections between both environ-
ments. The first section, “Socializing New People in New Settings,” pro-
vides, firstly, an overview of the literature on home-school relations when
it comes to ethnic minority children and, secondly, presents the novels
under study as examples of the way Latina boom writers include and chal-
lenge mainstream multicultural motifs in their texts. This section places
the interest on the subversive dimension and on how this is manifested in
1 INTRODUCTION 7

the spaces of the home and the school. The second section, “Daily Migra-
tions: Minding the Gap Between Home and School,” pays attention to
how the protagonist experiences and carefully negotiates a gap between
her home and the school, focusing on the different roles she takes up in
each setting. This involves a consideration of the power structures govern-
ing these places and how they mediate Negi’s performances. By contrast,
the third and last section, “Destabilizing Demarcations Between Home
and School: Mingling Social Practices, Values, and Meanings,” examines
the way these gaps are blurred as the protagonist incorporates a complex
amalgam of different value systems into her sense of identity, leading us to
consider the multiple (and often conflicting) elements that coalesce into
personal identities and social spaces.
This plurality of scenarios will offer a multidimensional picture of the
experiences of girls under study here and the different paths they take to
undo mainstream conceptions of places and identities. In negotiating their
daily lives across these multiple contexts, the girls that Alvarez, Cantú,
Ponce, and Santiago portray advance alternative ways of thinking about
subjectivites and spatialities, putting forward epistemologies and ethics
that challenge the contours and limits of coloniality. Thus, in line with
Michel Foucault’s claim that “where there is power, there is resistance”
(1978, 95), this book will show how the current logic of power makes
room for the destabilization of a Euro-American worldview on the part of
a youth group that is often rendered voiceless and denied the opportunity
to see themselves reflected in a world where girls are becoming more and
more visible.

Notes
1. The ethnic label “Latinx” is an umbrella term that covers diverse groups
of Latin American descent and thus erases substantial differences among
individual groups. However, it would be hard to use specific terms—such
as Chicanx, Puerto Rican, Dominican American, and Cuban American—
when referring to all the groups that are subsumed under this label. I use
it with no intention to disregard the specific socio-historical circumstances
of each group but for the purpose of a more practical and simple usage.
2. Unlike “Mexican American,” which is generally perceived as a neutral term,
“Chicanx” is a more politicized designation that signifies pride and ethnic
identity. However, to avoid unwieldy repetition, the terms “Mexican Amer-
ican” and “Chicanx” will be used interchangeably throughout this study
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