Encarnación: Illness and Body Politics in Chicana Feminist Literature (review)

Suzanne Bost's Encarnación: Illness and Body Politics in Chicana Feminist Literature effectively presents a connection between Chicana feminism and disability studies. Through the analysis of texts by Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, and Ana Castillo, and works by visual artists Frida Kahlo, Maya González, and Diane Gamboa, Bost develops "a model for identity that expands beyond the boundaries of individual bodies and argue[s] that this model has greater utility for feminism than identity politics because it values human variability, sensation, and openness to others" (30). Bost contends that the emphasis placed on the physical body's relationship to the environment in disability studies leads to innovative ideas of permeability and movement that can be applied to Chicana feminist identities and practices that expose the static rigidities of traditional categories of race, sex, and nation. This fluid theoretical approach to identity that goes beyond the physical body can address larger communal issues such as "the origins of suffering, violence, political mobilization, and desire," which, Bost argues, "must be found in contextual analysis of the interactions between bodies and environments" (214).

Having set up the theoretical praxis in the introduction and first chapter of Encarnación, Bost begins her detailed analyses in the second chapter, "Pain: Gloria Anzaldúa's Challenge to 'Women's Health,'" with a focus on the way Anzaldúa and her critics have addressed pain in her work, especially in lesser-known texts such as the poem "Holy Relics" and her essay, "now let us shift." Mesoamerican cultural practices such as human sacrifice can explain how Anzaldúa uses pain to produce the mestiza consciousness. Bost asserts that Anzaldúa's struggle with diabetes and its disruptive effects on her consciousness can account for the internal splits, perspective shifts, and fusion of genres found in her work. Such a reading complicates traditional feminist thinking that tends to prize women's physical safety and well-being above all else. Bost considers how illness expands community in Chapter Three, "Medicine: Cherríe Moraga's Boundary Violations." Bost contextualizes the account of the premature birth of Moraga's son Rafael Angel in Waiting in the Wings: Portrait of a Queer Motherhood (1997) within the Mesoamerican body practices and traditions that are addressed in Moraga's plays The Hungry Woman (2001) and Heart of the Earth (1994). The chapters on Anzaldúa and Moraga draw connections to the deities Coatlicue and Coyolxauhqui and the cycle of destruction and regeneration they represent. Bost details how the community in Moraga's Waiting in the Wings grows to include hospital staff, doctors, friends, and family, all of whom play a central role in the healing of her son. Such caregiving, Bost underscores, "leads to intersubjective perceptions of self and other rather than solidifying the ego of the care-giver" (148). In the next chapter, "Movement: Ana Castillo's Shape-Shifting Identities," Bost reads the qualities of movement and shape-shifting of the Mesoamerican god Tezcatlipoca as bases of identity embodied in the character of Carmen La Coja in Peel My Love Like an Onion (1999). These qualities explain how Carmen's identity is understood only within the multiple physical contexts where her body is situated. In the conclusion, through analyses of the visual art of Maya González and Diane Gamboa, Bost explains the vital ways the intersections of bodies and environments can inform the constitution of individual identities.

Perhaps the most significant contribution Bost makes to the field of Chicana/Latina studies is her focus on lesser-known texts of the authors and artists addressed and the application of her knowledge of Mesoamerican body practices and deities such as Coatlicue, Coyolxauhqui, and Tezcatlipoca to these works. Yet in this project there are some limited readings of theoretical concepts. For example, Bost defines culture in opposition to instability and unpredictability and as constituted by "boundaries around a coherent set of shared, scripted, and historically...