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Healing And Resistance Through Humor: A Literary And Cultural Analysis Of Chicana And Latina Cultural Production, Victoria E. Valdez
Healing And Resistance Through Humor: A Literary And Cultural Analysis Of Chicana And Latina Cultural Production, Victoria E. Valdez
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis analyzes elements of humor used by Chicana cultural producers (poets, performance artists, stand up comediennes) to subvert negative stereotypes of Chicanas. Chicana humorists have challenged harmful images of Mexican American women through poetry, prose, performances, and stand-up comedy. While Américo Paredes created a scholarly foundation for the study of Chicano humor, it is evident that Chicanos and members of dominant society mock Chicanas with their brand of humor. I argue writers like Michele Serros and Lorna Dee Cervantes resist dichotomous Chicana imagery and instead create and add to Chicana representation with humor. This thesis examines performance artist Maria …
Rain Of Gold'S Prison Play: Identity Making And Maneuvering, William Henry Guajardo
Rain Of Gold'S Prison Play: Identity Making And Maneuvering, William Henry Guajardo
Theses and Dissertations
Critics mostly dismiss Victor Villasenor's 1991 Rain of Gold—the supposed biography of the author's father who enters the United States during the Prohibition era. Nevertheless, upon closer examination this narrative explores and erodes corroded human categories and racial reductions present in the Southwestern penal system. According to scholars in critical prison studies and critical race theory, the prison functions as a state-sanctioned method for prosecuting criminals and persecuting minority Americans. Juxtaposing Rain of Gold with these two areas of academic research, however, reveals that penitentiaries produce faulty and fallible notions of personhood that are, in part, responsible for the …