Narratives of displacement : the spatialization of power in Chicanx/Latinx cultural production
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- My study centers around two main questions: 1) How have Latinx cultural producers imaginatively and tangibly intervened in the processes of gentrification and displacement? 2) What strategies have Latinx communities across diverse geographical contexts utilized to advance more equitable forms of social and spatial change? In Chapter One: "Placing Displacement and Dispossession: Reimagining Spatial Agency in Greater Los Angeles, " I begin with an analysis of Helena Maria Viramontes' Their Dogs Came with Them. In the wake of mass displacement during the 1960s, I argue, the built environment became defamiliarized, hostile terrain to the residents of East LA, particularly the pedestrians. I explore the creative strategies Viramontes' characters use to preserve their presence and survive their new social reality. I then turn to Héctor Tobar's The Barbarian Nurseries. I analyze Tobar's vision of Greater Los Angeles County as a site of pronounced social and economic inequality alongside an examination of the figure of the Latina domestic worker in the suburbs. In Chapter Two, "In Residence: Diasporic Memory-Work in Central American and Chicanx Cultural Activism" I examine of the gentrification of the Mission District of San Francisco, focusing specifically on the role of rising income inequality, rents, and home values in the demographic transformation of the neighborhood. I argue that the designation of Calle 24 Cultural District attempts to intervene directly in the gentrification process by utilizing urban planning strategies to contend with the loss of its traditionally working class Latinx culture. I then consider how Latinx residents' use cultural production to protest racial and ethnic stratification and heal from the violence of displacement. Among them, I explore Robert Lovato's memoir's assertion that the 1932 Matanza and 1980s civil war inform Salvadoreans' contemporary struggles with gang-violence and forced migration to the United States. I argue that Lovato's critical framework, "unforgetting" is a powerful tool for the writing of familial hemispheric history and seeking truth and reconciliation amongst legacies of violence. In Chapter Three: "Recovering Mexican Chicago— Literature as Historical Archive, " I consider poet José Olivarez's participation in spoken word spaces and his mentorship of youth as I highlight the way he writes against racial and ethnic inequality in contemporary Chicago. I contend that Olivarez's practice of Chicanx worldmaking in his poetry collection Citizen Illegal demonstrates the emancipatory potential of imagined communities where low-income people of color transform, on their own terms, the unjust social, economic, and cultural systems that structure our society. I then turn to Sandra Cisneros' Caramelo and House on Mango Street and describe them as active representations of "creative placemaking.".
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Garcia, Cynthia Jennifer |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Moya, Paula M. L |
| Thesis advisor | Moya, Paula M. L |
| Thesis advisor | Fishkin, Shelley Fisher |
| Thesis advisor | Frank, Zephyr L, 1970- |
| Thesis advisor | Saldívar, José David |
| Degree committee member | Fishkin, Shelley Fisher |
| Degree committee member | Frank, Zephyr L, 1970- |
| Degree committee member | Saldívar, José David |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Program in Modern Thought and Literature |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Cynthia Jennifer Garcia. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Program in Modern Thought and Literature. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/zv206dq7186 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Cynthia Jennifer Garcia
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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