Post-Borderlandia: Chicana Literature and Gender Variant Critique

by T. Jackie Cuevas

Honorable Mention, 2018 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize from the National Women's Studies Association
2019 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist​

Bringing Chicana/o studies into conversation with queer theory and transgender studies, Post-Borderlandia examines why gender variance is such a core theme in contemporary Chicana and Chicanx narratives. It considers how Chicana butch lesbians and Chicanx trans people are not only challenging heteropatriarchal norms, but also departing from mainstream conceptions of queerness and gender identification.  

Expanding on Gloria Anzaldúa’s classic formulation of the Chicana as transformer of the “borderlands,” Jackie Cuevas explores how a new generation of Chicanx writers, performers, and filmmakers are imagining a “post-borderlands” subjectivity, where shifting national, racial, class, sexual, and gender identifications produce complex power dynamics. In addition, Cuevas offers fresh archival analysis of the Chicana feminist canon to reveal how queer gender variance has always been crucial to this literary tradition. 

188 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 2018

About the author

T. Jackie Cuevas is an Assistant Professor of Latina/o Literary and Cultural Studies in the Department of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research focuses on questions of gender and sexuality in Latina/o literature. Cuevas is the coeditor of El Mundo Zurdo 4: Selected Works from the Meetings of The Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa, and she has published in journals such as Latino Studies.

Reviews

[Nadia · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a little book, this has a lot happening. While I had expected a greater tie-in to Anzaldua's original text, the introduction made the intentions of the book clear, and I appreciated the way it was presented, setting up expectations. I was not at all surprised to learn that I didn't know any of the texts that were referenced and analyzed as part of this project, but was glad to read about them with such depth and critical consideration.