English Language and Literature Commons^™

Writing The Womb, Writing The Wound: The Function Of Vulnerability In Autotheory, Madison Weaver

Master’s Theses

This thesis frames autotheory, a genre and practice of writing based in autobiographical and theoretical work, in the feminist genealogies established by Lauren Fournier and as a study in vulnerability. I revisit and reconsider Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of my Name (1982) and Cherríe Moraga’s Waiting in the Wings: A Portrait of Queer Motherhood (1997) in terms of contemporary conversation on autotheory that center on Nelson’s popular memoir The Argonauts (2015), arguing that Lorde, Moraga, and Nelson practice autotheory by writing through physical and metaphorical wounds. This thesis considers how vulnerability is tied to the autotheoretical impulse by …

Tearing Down Walls And Building Bridges, Melba J. Boyd

Criticism

A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000–2010 by Cherríe L. Moraga. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Pp. 280, 9 illustrations. $84.95 cloth, $23.95 paper.

Framing Identity: Repudiating The Ideal In Chicana Literature, Michael A. Flores

All NMU Master's Theses

In the 1960s Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez penned his now canonical, epic poem “I Am Joaquin.” The poem chronicles the historic oppression of a transnational, Mexican people as well as revolutionary acts of their forefathers in resisting tyranny. Coinciding with a series of renewed, sociopolitical campaigns, collectively known as the Chicano Movement, Gonzales’ poem uses vivid imagery to present an idealized representation of Chicanos and encouraged his reader to engage in revolutionary action. Though the poem encourages strong leadership, upward mobility, and political engagement the representations of women in his text are misogynistic and limiting.

His presentation of the “black-shawled …