Maria's Rebellion: Gayl Jones's Mosquito and the Problem of Recognition

This essay proposes a hermeneutic of critical invisibility, borrowed from the politics of silence in African American and Latin American cultural studies, to offer a revisionary account of recognition: rather than a condition to which to aspire, the undocumented immigrant demonstrates what can be gained by remaining in the shadows of recognition. Using Mosquito's attention to interethnic coalition building between African Americans and Latinos both in the U.S. and abroad, this paper proposes that we read the novel for what it might say about the failures, and not the promises, of recognition for these populations. In so doing, I extend the project of looking to African American literature as a necessary and valuable source for powerful and enduring representations of immigration, as well as critiques of the methods and objectives of immigrant rights movements.