From this set of critical stories emerges a timely confession from marginalized imagined communities at the physical and metaphorical Mexican-American border. These hybrid storytellers create a multivalence of experiences and genres. Composers of this ground-breaking collection draw readers into an affective connection with the borderlands, offering critical examinations of legal status, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, social class, family, and health. Additionally, creative representations across genres explore notions of geography, vulnerability, suffering, trauma, pain as well as joy, healing, and love. By posing questions about loss of innocence, they incite new literary and visual spaces for fusing together fragments of the remains of land, body, and/or being, all the while creating a site of fresh confessions where critical stories are illuminated collages assembled together from within la línea.
Contributors are: Kiri Avelar, Irving Ayala, Carmella J. Braniger, Roxana Fragoso Carrillo, Marisa V. Cervantes, Guadalupe Chavez, Julio Enríquez-Ornelas, Liliana Conlisk Gallegos, Verónica Gaona, Andrea Gómez, Filiberto Mares Hernández, Víctor M. Macías-González, Carol Mariano, Ana Silvia Monzón Monterroso, Juana Moriel-Payne, Rachel Neff, Jumko Ogata-Aguilar, José Olivarez, Isabela Ortega, Paul Pedroza, Jorge Omar Ramírez Pimienta, Raphaella Prange, Felipe Quetzalcoatl Quintanilla, Erica Reyes, Fidel García Reyes, Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana and Santiago Vaquera-Vasquez.
Carmella J. Braniger, Ph.D. (2003), Oklahoma State University, is Professor of English at Millikin University. She has published poems, chapbooks, and critical stories, and edited four volumes of Critical Storytelling since 2017.
Julio Enríquez-Ornelas, Ph.D. (2014), University of California, is an Associate Professor at Millikin University. His work on Latin American and Latinx Studies appears in Prose Studies, Hispania, Journal of the MMLA, Textos Híbridos, Alchemy: Journal of Translation, El BeisMan, and Suburbano.
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Introduction Carmella J. Braniger and Julio A. Enríquez-Ornelas
PART 1: En La Línea
1 Remember, Roots Still Grow Beneath: Learning from Conscious Transfronteriza/o/x Trauma Liliana Conlisk Gallegos
2 Field Notes from the Borderlands: Reflections on Reading, Writing, and Travel Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez
3 The Playas de Tijuana Mural Project: Digital Storytelling, Portraiture and U.S.-Mexico Border Art Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana
4 Life on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1970–1980 Víctor M. Macías-González
PART 2: Wild Tongues
5 Criterion Number 3: Unstable Sense of Self; ca. 1993 Paul Pedroza
6 Regresando a Casa Jumko Ogata
7 “Me, Foreign Woman” Andrea Gómez
8 Liminality Rachel Neff
9 Two Poems Ana Silvia Monzón Monterroso
PART 3: Thin Edge of Barbwire
10 Welcome to Colonia Libertad, 2007–to Date & From Album of Fences Jorge Omar Ramírez Pimienta
11 Salamandra Filiberto Mares Hernández
12 “Heart of the Borderland (Corazón Fronterizo)” & “La Rosa de El Paso” Isabela Ortega
13 “My Friends from Work” Fidel García Reyes
14 Las casas y nosotros Verónica Gaona
14 Las casas y nosotros Verónica Gaona
15 “I Am Enough” Erica Reyes
PART 4: Shadow Beast
16 That’s Not My Name: A Journey of Reclamation Marisa V. Cervantes
17 Esta puente/mi espalda: Interseccionalidad entre feminismo y chicanismo Roxana Fragoso Carrillo
18 Two Poems & A Story Juana Moriel-Payne
19 Cilantro Taconeo, Manos de Maiz, Texas Masa & Ruido Kiri Avelar
20 Shadow Series Carol Mariano
PART 5: Writing as a Sensuous Act
21 “when i say diaspora” José Olivarez
22 La mujer de papa, arroz y yuca Lina Paredes Espitia
23 Hecho a Mano, “Made by Hand” Raphaella Prange
24 La Chip Truck Felipe Quetzal
25 xxx Julio Enríquez-Ornelas
Epilog: Coloniality Incarnate: Conversational Assemblage with Liliana Conlisk Gallegos, Omar Pimenta & Julio Enríquez-Ornelas Carmella Braniger
All interested in the history of the border, Lantinx studies, Ethnic Studies, queer studies, Spanish, Latin American, Borderland studies, feminist studies, American studies, global studies, autoethnography, poetry, writing and rhetoric studies, trauma studies, and critical studies.