Alicia de Alba's Books

[Un]framing the "Bad Woman"

Sor Juana, Malinche, Coyolxauhqui, and Other Rebels with a Cause

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

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[Un]framing the "Bad Woman"

Sor Juana, Malinche, Coyolxauhqui, and Other Rebels with a Cause

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

“What the women I write about have in common is that they are all rebels with a cause, and I see myself represented in their mirror,” asserts Alicia Gaspar de Alba. Looking back across a career in which she has written novels, poems, and scholarly works about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, la Malinche, Coyolxauhqui, the murdered women of Juárez, the Salem witches, and Chicana lesbian feminists, Gaspar de Alba realized that what links these historically and socially diverse figures is that they all fall into the category of “bad women,” as defined by their place, culture, and time, and all have been punished as well as remembered for rebelling against the “frames” imposed on them by capitalist patriarchal discourses. In [Un]Framing the “Bad Woman,” Gaspar de Alba revisits and expands several of her published articles and presents three new essays to analyze how specific brown/female bodies have been framed by racial, social, cultural, sexual, national/regional, historical, and religious discourses of identity—as well as how Chicanas can be liberated from these frames. Employing interdisciplinary methodologies of activist scholarship that draw from art, literature, history, politics, popular culture, and feminist theory, she shows how the “bad women” who interest her are transgressive bodies that refuse to cooperate with patriarchal dictates about what constitutes a “good woman” and that queer/alter the male-centric and heteronormative history, politics, and consciousness of Chicano/Mexicano culture. By “unframing” these bad women and rewriting their stories within a revolutionary frame, Gaspar de Alba offers her compañeras and fellow luchadoras empowering models of struggle, resistance, and rebirth.

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Page Count

401

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292757638

ISBN 13

9780292757639

Calligraphy of the Witch

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

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Calligraphy of the Witch

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

After being captured by pirates, Concepciâon Benavidez, a young Spanish girl who has been impregnated by the pirate captain, is sold as a slave to a prominent Puritan and finds herself accused of witchcraft by the residents of Salem Village.

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Page Count

450

Publisher

Arte Publico Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1558857532

ISBN 13

9781558857537

Making a Killing

Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba,Georgina Guzmán

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Making a Killing

Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba,Georgina Guzmán

Since 1993, more than five hundred women and girls have been murdered in Ciudad Juárez across the border from El Paso, Texas. At least a third have been sexually violated and mutilated as well. Thousands more have been reported missing and remain unaccounted for. The crimes have been poorly investigated and have gone unpunished and unresolved by Mexican authorities, thus creating an epidemic of misogynist violence on an increasingly globalized U.S.-Mexico border. This book, the first anthology to focus exclusively on the Juárez femicides, as the crimes have come to be known, compiles several different scholarly "interventions" from diverse perspectives, including feminism, Marxism, critical race theory, semiotics, and textual analysis. Editor Alicia Gaspar de Alba shapes a multidisciplinary analytical framework for considering the interconnections between gender, violence, and the U.S.-Mexico border. The essays examine the social and cultural conditions that have led to the heinous victimization of women on the border—from globalization, free trade agreements, exploitative maquiladora working conditions, and border politics, to the sexist attitudes that pervade the social discourse about the victims. The book also explores the evolving social movement that has been created by NGOs, mothers' organizing efforts, and other grassroots forms of activism related to the crimes. Contributors include U.S. and Mexican scholars and activists, as well as personal testimonies of two mothers of femicide victims.

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Page Count

329

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

029272277X

ISBN 13

9780292722774

La Llorona on the Longfellow Bridge

Poetry Y otras movidas

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

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La Llorona on the Longfellow Bridge

Poetry Y otras movidas

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

In this collection of poetry and essays, Gaspar de Alba incorporates the Mexican archetypal wailing woman who wanders in search of her lost children. La Llorona is more than an archetype: she is a tour guide through the ruins of love and family and the constant presence of the poet's voice. She transcends time, place, and gender. The lines of the poems breathe that haunted spirit as they describe her movidas, both geographic and figurative, in search of the lost mother, the absent father, the abandoned child, the lover, the self. These essays track other movements of thought: reflections on identity, sexuality, and resistance. As a leading interpreter of border life and culture, poet, storyteller, and essayist Gaspar de Alba explores the borders and limits of place, body, and language through a painful series of moves and losses. She prevails and becomes the forger of her own destiny, her own image on the landscape, the interpreter of her own dreams and history. These vibrant poems and essays of self-creation, even to the basic task of choosing her own name, are a testament to the phoenix-like quality of art: the poet can create beauty out of destruction and desolation.

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Page Count

132

Publisher

Arte Publico Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1611921961

ISBN 13

9781611921960

Our Lady of Controversy

Alma López's “Irreverent Apparition”

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba,Alma López

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Our Lady of Controversy

Alma López's “Irreverent Apparition”

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba,Alma López

Months before Alma López's digital collage Our Lady was shown at the Museum of International Folk Art in 2001, the museum began receiving angry phone calls from community activists and Catholic leaders who demanded that the image not be displayed. Protest rallies, prayer vigils, and death threats ensued, but the provocative image of la Virgen de Guadalupe (hands on hips, clad only in roses, and exalted by a bare-breasted butterfly angel) remained on exhibition. Highlighting many of the pivotal questions that have haunted the art world since the NEA debacle of 1988, the contributors to Our Lady of Controversy present diverse perspectives, ranging from definitions of art to the artist's intention, feminism, queer theory, colonialism, and Chicano nationalism. Contributors include the exhibition curator, Tey Marianna Nunn; award-winning novelist and Chicana historian Emma Pérez; and Deena González (recognized as one of the fifty most important living women historians in America). Accompanied by a bonus DVD of Alma López's I Love Lupe video that looks at the Chicana artistic tradition of reimagining la Virgen de Guadalupe, featuring a historic conversation between Yolanda López, Ester Hernández, and Alma López, Our Lady of Controversy promises to ignite important new dialogues.

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Page Count

345

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292726422

ISBN 13

9780292726420

Subjects in Process

By: Michael A. Peters,Alicia de Alba

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Subjects in Process

By: Michael A. Peters,Alicia de Alba

Subjects in Process investigates the human subject in the first decade of the twenty-first century in relation to changing social circumstances and belongings. The concept of 'subjectivity' in the Western tradition has focused on the figure of the autonomous, self-conscious, and rooted individual. This book develops a conception of the subject that is nomadic and fluid rather than grounded and complete. Written from a perspective that takes account of globalisation - and the pressures that it places upon individuals and communities - this book draws upon Nietzsche and the post-modern thinkers that followed him. Arguing that a modern conception of the subject must be one based on cultural exchanges and transformations, this book is sure to provide new insights for anyone concerned with or interested in the identity of the individual now and in the future.

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Page Count

298

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317251180

ISBN 13

9781317251187

Migrant Imaginaries

Latino Cultural Politics in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

By: Alicia Schmidt Camacho

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Migrant Imaginaries

Latino Cultural Politics in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

By: Alicia Schmidt Camacho

Winner of the 2009 Lora Romero First Book Prize from the American Studies Association 2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Explores the transnational movements of Mexican migrants, including their expressive culture and social movement practices Migrant Imaginaries explores the transnational movements of Mexican migrants in pursuit of labor and civil rights in the United States from the 1920s onward. Working through key historical moments such as the 1930s, the Chicano Movement, and contemporary globalization and neoliberalism, Alicia Schmidt Camacho examines the relationship between ethnic Mexican expressive culture and the practices sustaining migrant social movements. Combining sustained historical engagement with theoretical inquiries, she addresses how struggles for racial and gender equity, cross-border unity, and economic justice have defined the Mexican presence in the United States since 1910. Schmidt Camacho covers a range of archives and sources, including migrant testimonials and songs, Amrico Parede’s last published novel, The Shadow, the film Salt of the Earth, the foundational manifestos of El Movimiento, Richard Rodriguez’s memoirs, narratives by Marisela Norte and Rosario Sanmiguel, and testimonios of Mexican women workers and human rights activists, as well as significant ethnographic research. Throughout, she demonstrates how Mexicans and Mexican Americans imagined their communal ties across the border, and used those bonds to contest their noncitizen status. Migrant Imaginaries places migrants at the center of the hemisphere’s most pressing concerns, contending that border crossers have long been vital to social change.

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Page Count

389

Publisher

NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0814717349

ISBN 13

9780814717349

The Curse of the Gypsy

Ten Stories and a Novella

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

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The Curse of the Gypsy

Ten Stories and a Novella

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

In the first story of this absorbing collection, Margarita—sixteen and married to a soldier who has gone off to fight in the first great war—meets and falls in love with Federico Garcia Lorca. He calls her “Margarita Petita,” and then turns her name into a poem. When he refuses to marry the widowed gypsy girl after a tryst at the river leaves her pregnant, her mother curses both Lorca and his offspring: “May they all die before they see the light of day.” And so Lorca is killed by fascists and his child dies in Margarita’s womb, where it remains—petrified—for 80 years. Mysteries and furtive desires pervade the enthralling stories in this group of ten the author calls a “deconstructed novel.” Rich in imagery and language, they chronicle the gypsy’s life, including banishment from Andalusia by her mother, marriage to a famous Mexican bull fighter and the lives of numerous descendants who ultimately leave Mexico for El Paso, Texas. In one of the final stories, “Calaveras in the Closet,” the gypsy’s extensive family comes together for her funeral, where several long-guarded secrets will suddenly come to light. Also included in this volume is a historical novella, Liberata Wilgefortis: The True and Tragic Story of the Bearded Female Saint, a mystical retelling of an ancient legend about the first bearded female saint of the Catholic Church whose cult was removed by Vatican II in 1969. Expertly weaving poetry, historical events, myth and legend into intriguing short fiction, Alicia Gaspar de Alba confirms her place as one of the leading contemporary Latinx voices.

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Page Count

263

Publisher

Arte Publico Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1518504930

ISBN 13

9781518504938

Sor Juana's Second Dream

A Novel

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

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Sor Juana's Second Dream

A Novel

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

This historically accurate and beautifully written novel explores the secret inclinations, subjective desires, and political struggles of the 17th-century Mexican nun and poet.

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484

Publisher

UNM Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0826320929

ISBN 13

9780826320926

Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master’s House

Cultural Politics and the CARA Exhibition

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

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Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master’s House

Cultural Politics and the CARA Exhibition

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

In the early 1990s, a major exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985 toured major museums around the United States. As a first attempt to define and represent Chicano/a art for a national audience, the exhibit attracted both praise and controversy, while raising fundamental questions about the nature of multiculturalism in the U.S. This book presents the first interdisciplinary cultural study of the CARA exhibit. Alicia Gaspar de Alba looks at the exhibit as a cultural text in which the Chicano/a community affirmed itself not as a "subculture" within the U.S. but as an "alter-Native" culture in opposition to the exclusionary and homogenizing practices of mainstream institutions. She also shows how the exhibit reflected the cultural and sexual politics of the Chicano Movement and how it serves as a model of Chicano/a popular culture more generally. Drawing insights from cultural studies, feminist theory, anthropology, and semiotics, this book constitutes a wide-ranging analysis of Chicano/a art, popular culture, and mainstream cultural politics. It will appeal to a diverse audience in all of these fields.

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349

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292788983

ISBN 13

9780292788985

Crimes of the Tongue

Essays and Stories

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

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Crimes of the Tongue

Essays and Stories

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

A native of the El Paso / Ciudad Juarez region, acclaimed author and scholar Alicia Gaspar de Alba writes that she grew up with “a forked tongue and a severe case of cultural schizophrenia, the split in the psyche that happens to someone who grows up in the borderlands between nations, languages and cultures.” Border dwellers struggle with place and identity in the short fiction included in this collection. An El Paso-born American citizen with a high school diploma and a talent for writing seeks a job as a reporter at the El Paso Herald after World War I but gets hired as a janitor and research specialist instead. A Mexican woman takes her young daughter north to protect her from sexual abuse, only to leave the girl with relatives while she crosses the river in search of a job and a new life. And a college student gets a Tarot reading to help her discern the historical symbolism of her bicultural identity. The award-winning writer explores other “crimes of the tongue” in the essays in this volume: pochismo, or the mixing of English and Spanish, as both a family taboo and a politics of identity; the haunting memory of La Llorona, protector of undocumented immigrants and abandoned children, and her blood-curdling cry of loss and revenge; the intersection of the personal and the political in the transgressive work of Chicana/Latina artists; the sexual and linguistic rebellions of La Malinche and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz; and the reverse coyotaje, or border crossing, of Chicana lesbian feminist theory translated into Spanish and visual art as a way of sneaking this counterhegemonic pocha poetic thought into Mexico. These essays and stories are always intellectually rigorous and often achingly personal.

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Page Count

260

Publisher

Arte Publico Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1518507301

ISBN 13

9781518507304

Sor Juana's Second Dream

A Novel

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

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Sor Juana's Second Dream

A Novel

By: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

This historically accurate and beautifully written novel explores the secret inclinations, subjective desires, and political struggles of the 17th-century Mexican nun and poet.

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Page Count

484

Publisher

UNM Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0826320929

ISBN 13

9780826320926

Queering Mestizaje

Transculturation and Performance

By: Alicia Arrizón

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Queering Mestizaje

Transculturation and Performance

By: Alicia Arrizón

Rethinking mestizaje and how it functions as an epistemology of colonialism in diverse sites from Aztlán to Manila, and across a range of cultural materials

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