Disability in Spanish-speaking and US Chicano Contexts: Critical and Artistic Perspectives ed. by Dawn Slack, Karen L. Rauch (review)

This sampling of essays examines representations of disability spanning some five centuries and three continents. Mixed-media visual and poetic works by Khédija Gadhoum are interwoven throughout the book, which is organized according to implicit thematic clusters. While the individual essays’ degree of engagement with the field of disability studies varies, unifying motifs include narrative prosthesis, subjectivity, normativity, social critique, and transgression.

In the opening study of Disability in Spanish-speaking and US Chicano Contexts: Critical and Artistic Perspectives, Beth E. Jörgensen discusses the relationship between blindness and representation in “Blind Spot (Notes on Reading Blindness)” (trans. Jörgensen) and Seeing Red (trans. Megan McDowell) by contemporary New York-based Chilean writer Lina Meruane. María Esther Quintana Millamoto reads the portrayal of corporeal difference in contemporary Chicana novelist Ana Castillo’s Peel My Love Like an Onion as a challenge to societal expectations for Mexican American women. Jennifer Brady’s chapter addresses the interplay of impairment, language, and subjectivity in the novel La mujer loca by contemporary Spanish writer Juan José Millás. Dawn Slack highlights social criticism in the portrayal of characters with disabilities in short stories by contemporary Spanish American writers Cristina Pacheco, Fanny Buitrago, and Carmen Naranjo. Questions of biopolitics and prosthesis in the novel Perros héroes by contemporary Mexican-Peruvian writer Mario Bellatin are the focus of Jennifer Thorndike’s chapter. Gloria Jeanne Bodtorf Clark explores the concept of body-shaming in portrayals of and works by seventeenth-century Spanish writer Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, highlighting the play Los favores del mundo. Carlos Rodríguez McGill’s contribution discusses Eduardo Gutiérrez’s El Jorobado series of detective novels within the context of xenophobic modernizing discourses in late nineteenth-century Argentina. Karen L. Rauch reads postcolonial themes in the stories “La pierna de M. Lavalette” and “Sand on the Sea” by contemporary Dominican writer Marco Veloz Maggiolo through the lens of narrative prosthesis. Lastly, Meredith L. Jeffers offers a close reading of two recent films from Spain that juxtapose autonomous protagonists’ disability with supporting characters’ “inability”: Yo, también (dir. Álvaro Pastor and Antonio Naharro) and El truco del manco (dir. Santiago Zannou). Brief concluding remarks by the editors signal shared and contrasting themes and link the book to existing scholarship (Jörgensen and Antebi, Fraser).

The editors’ introduction provides an overview of key concepts such as the normate (Garland Thomson), passing (Siebers), narrative prosthesis (Mitchell and Snyder), and monstrosity (Antebi), making the book accessible to newcomers to disability studies. Likewise, the authors contextualize their discussions for a broad readership. Usage of terminology (able-bodied, impairment, incapacity, lameness, deformity, wheelchair-bound, etc.) is inconsistent across chapters, reflecting the book’s eclectic approach and perhaps owing in part to the influence of Spanish-language norms and connotations.