Meaning of Crossing Borderlines and Differential Movement in Chicana Literature

초록

This paper aims to deliberately describe and critically review the genealogy of Chicana literature, especially novels, via Chicana theorists’ critical lens—Emma Perez’s ‘decolonial imagination’ and Chela Sandoval’s ‘Methodology of the Oppressed.’ Tracing Chicana literary history, I will first of all analyze a groundbreaking novel, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s Who Would Have Thought it?, which has been regarded as one of the groundbreaking major Chicana literary texts. In turn, I will analyze another historical Chicana literary and critical text, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera utilizing Emma Perez’s theory. Through this analysis, I will probe deeply into the meaning of crossing imaginary, ideological and real borderlines across racism, colonialism, and sexism for Chicana writers. In the last section, I will interpret Norma Elia Cantu’s Canicula-Snapshots of a Girlhood with theoretical scaffolding of Chela Sandoval’s semiotic critique. The images and written texts in this experimental pseudo -memoir semiotically deconstruct ideologies of the U.S. where only white mythology dominates. After all, I envision a literary constellation where borders become emblem in which Chicana’s voices resonate with other ethnic women writers’ memories.

키워드