Telling Border Life Stories: Four Mexican American Women Writers

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Memory and Historical Remembering: The Art of Autobiography andTheoretical Perspectives 10 Three Phases of Critical Perspectives concerning Autobiography 11 Autobiography as a Historical Document and Basis for Knowledge 11 Autobiography as a LiteraryText and as Art 14 New Notions of Autobiography 18 Challenging Horizons of Expectations:Self,Community ,and culture 21 The Border Autobiography 28 The Emergence of Border Voices 35 Chapter 2. Narrative and Descriptive Discourse: The Autobiographical “I”and Cultural Preconstructs Concerned with Space 43 Narrating the Autobiographical“I”and Life Worlds 45 Jovita González’s“Early Li fe and Education”and Dew on the Thorn 47 Cleofas Jaramillo’s Romance of a Little Village Girl 53 Eva Antonia Wilbur-Cruce’s A Beautiful, Cruel Country 60 Mary Helen Ponce’s Hoyt Street 67 Descriptive Discourse and the Creation of a Cultural Universe 74 “Early Life and Education”and Dew on the Thorn 75 Romance of a Little Village Girl 79 A Beautiful, Cruel Country 82 Hoyt Street 87 vi ConTenTs Chapter 3. Recovering Cultural and Historical Memory:The Dynamic Quality of Semiotic Structures 93 Cultural Space in the Borderlands 96 Cultural Memory and the Effect of Cultural Explosion 97 Exploring Historical Ruptures 99 History and Memory:Cultural Collisions and Social Transformations 106 “Early Life and Education”and Dew on the Thorn 107 Romance of a Little Village Girl 111 A Beautiful, Cruel Country 115 Hoyt Street 119 Representation of the Cultural“Other” 122 “Early Life and Education”and Dew on the Thorn 123 Romance of a Little Village Girl 126 A Beautiful, Cruel Country 128 Hoyt Street 132 Chapter 4. The Female Subject and Expressions of Life Experiences: Social Practice and Imaginary Formations 136 Discourse Production and Mechanisms of Power and Ideology 138 Habitus as Social Practice 143 “Early Life and Education”and Dew on the Thorn 145 Romance of a Little Village Girl 151 A Beautiful, Cruel Country 156 Hoyt Street 160 Imaginary Formations and the Female Subject 165 “Early Life and Education”and Dew on the Thorn 168 Romance of a Little Village Girl 175 A Beautiful, Cruel Country 179 Hoyt Street 184 Conclusions 190 Notes 201 Works Cited 219 Index 229 ...