With Her Machete in Her Hand: Reading Chicana Lesbians

Catrióna Rueda Esquibel

Published by University of Texas Press 2006

With Her Machete in Her Hand

Reading Chicana Lesbians

Catrióna Rueda Esquibel

In the series Chicana Matters

https://doi.org/10.7560/709713

Overview
Contents

About this book

With the 1981 publication of the groundbreaking anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa ushered in an era of Chicana lesbian writing. But while these two writers have achieved iconic status, observers of the Chicana/o experience have been slow to perceive the existence of a whole community—lesbian and straight, male as well as female—who write about the Chicana lesbian experience. To create a first full map of that community, this book explores a wide range of plays, novels, and short stories by Chicana/o authors that depict lesbian characters or lesbian desire.

Catrióna Rueda Esquibel starts from the premise that Chicana/o communities, theories, and feminisms cannot be fully understood without taking account of the perspectives and experiences of Chicana lesbians. To open up these perspectives, she engages in close readings of works centered around the following themes: La Llorona, the Aztec Princess, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, girlhood friendships, rural communities and history, and Chicana activism. Her investigation broadens the community of Chicana lesbian writers well beyond Moraga and Anzaldúa, while it also demonstrates that the histories of Chicana lesbians have had to be written in works of fiction because these women have been marginalized and excluded in canonical writings on Chicano life and experience.

Author / Editor information

Catrióna Rueda Esquibel is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University.

Reviews

I am wildly ecstatic about this project and thoroughly grateful for Esquibel's interventions in the cause of Chicana lesbian authors . . . now extending into this cutting-edge and highly readable critical text.

— Alicia Gaspar de Alba

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Prologue: A Chicana Lesbian Scholar’s Tale Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Introduction: History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER 1 Chicana Lesbian Fictions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
CHAPTER 2 The Mystery of the Weeping Woman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	22
CHAPTER 3 Black Velvet Fantasies: “The” Aztec Princess in the Chicana/o Sexual Imagination Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	42
CHAPTER 4 Sor Juana and the Search for (Queer) Cultural Heroes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	66
CHAPTER 5 Memories of Girlhood: Chicana Lesbian Fictions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
CHAPTER 6 Shameless Histories: Talking Race/Talking Sex Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
CHAPTER 7 Queer for the Revolution: The Representation of Politics and the Politics of Representation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
CHAPTER 8 Conclusion: With Her Machete in Her Hand Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	176
APPENDIX Toward a Chronological Bibliography of Chicana Lesbian Fictions, 1971–2000 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 263

eBook

Published: September 15, 2009
ISBN: 9780292796256