Latina Performance: Traversing the Stage, and: Latin American Women Dramatists, and: Critical Acts: Latin American Women and Cultural Criticism, and: The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (review)

Latina Performance: Traversing the Stage by Alicia Arrizce: Traversing the Stageon ethnic conflict in an effort to define the ideal, usual, and exLatin American Women Dramatists edited by Catherine Larson and Margarita Vargas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998, 320 pp., $39.95 hardcover, $19.95 paper.

Critical Acts: Latin American Women and Cultural Criticism by Elizabeth A. Marchant. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999, 143 pp., $49.95 hardcover.

The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History by Emma Pérez. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999, 199 pp., $35.00 hardcover, $16.95 paper.

If the thrust of these four lively new contributions to Latina/Chicana scholarship could be fairly summed and encapsulated in a few words, identity-formation would be among the most prominent candidates for that description. While diverse in scope–two consider dramatic works, one literary criticism and the novel, and one history and historiography–all take on the task of reclamation of Latina identity from marginalized places. Latina identity, like that of African American women and Asian American women, is necessarily multiply constructed and thus subject to tensions that are oftentimes ignored by U.S. feminist paradigms. Works such as these considered below take up the task of "excavating" fragments of identity discarded by ethnic patriarchies who muffle women’s voices and restrict women’s agency in the name of liberation for the ethnic body. The fluid result of this ongoing project is nothing less than the transformation of ethnic meta-histories and metatheories into a mosaic of narratives that liberate instead of confine, and that express rather than compress.

The cogent volume, Latina Performance: Traversing the Stage, concerns itself with "border crossings"–not simply in the physical sense of migration from south to north, but in the multiple engagements Latinas face in an Anglo-, phallo-, and heterocentric society that enforces assimilation at every turn. In Arrizón’s analysis, Latinas in the theatre arts historically have found it necessary to confront these borders head-on in the process of constructing their performative identities. Examination of how specific performers negotiate the borders not only makes it possible to trace a tradition of Latina performance, but also allows links to gender studies genres that consider other ethnicities. Yet, as Arrizón correctly points out, comparably little academic attention has been paid to Latina/o performance studies except "in the name of preserving multiculturalism" (xvii). With this book, Arrizón provides a significant foray into that arena in order to meet the goal of "expand[ing] the possibilities of Latina theatre and performance studies" (xviii).

Latina Performance is both an historical survey and a critical analysis, engaging the performative identities of a diversity of theatre artists from the time of the Mexican Revolution (1910—1917) to the present. The first chapter, "In Quest of Latinidad: Identity, Disguise, and Politics," uses an historical overview of Latin influx to the United States to argue that the nature of Latina existence is multiply determined and transitory. While highly useful as a cultural introduction for the newcomer, it perhaps takes on a greater historical sweep than it needs to–the chapter could easily become a book in itself, and the sad consequence of taking such a large bite is the feeling at times of a dizzying array of scant details. Nevertheless, it amply demonstrates that Latina identity-generation is in a constant flux as a result of the constraints placed upon it, and Arrizón’s cultural observations about Latina/o presence in the United States are generally quite sound. For example, her application of Third World, feminist ideologies (qua Chandra Mohanty) to Latina existence in the States forms a useful baseline for her subsequent focus on the political nature of the performers she considers.

But it is with the...