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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Trans-Urban Narratives: Literary Cartographies and Global Cities in the Urban Imagination of Mexico and the U.S. Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19x2c475 Author Ramirez, Alejandro Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Trans-Urban Narratives: Literary Cartographies and Global Cities in the Urban Imagination of Mexico and the U.S. A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures by Alejandro Ramírez Méndez 2018 © Copyright by Alejandro Ramírez Méndez 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Trans-Urban Narratives: Literary Cartographies and Global Cities in the Urban Imagination of Mexico and the U.S. by Alejandro Ramírez Méndez Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Héctor Calderón, Chair This dissertation examines how narratives from Mexican and Mexican-American writers interconnect urban landscapes and cultures in the transnational context of the twenty-first century. This study focuses on what I call “trans-urban narratives,” a method of literary analysis by comparing the urban environment of Mexico City with three global centers in the U.S.: Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. In these narratives, Mexican writers (Valeria Luiselli and Juan Villoro) and Mexican-American writers (Sandra Cisneros and Alejandro Morales) portray the transitional experience of their protagonists within two global cities, two urban realities located in opposite sides of the U.S./Mexico border. They create bi-national and hemispheric connections through the juxtaposition of urban landscapes from both countries. While in the twentieth century urban narratives focus mainly in one specific urban environment, my project argues that in the twenty-first ii century the Mexican and Mexican-American literary productions are building transnational spaces within the city that allow the cross-border communication of their cultures. In Chapter One, I examine the intersection, interconnection and fusion of Mexico City and Chicago in post-national narratives. I analyze the short story “Chicago” (2008) by Juan Villoro, focusing on how the main character –a Mexican taxi driver who has lived in the United States– produces a mental map by overlapping the geographies of Mexico City and Chicago. I argue that this alternative cartography draws a new geopolitical space that eliminates cultural boundaries. In Chapter Two, I continue the social, political and cultural exploration of Chicago and Mexico City but through the analysis of Caramelo (2002) by Sandra Cisneros. In this chapter, I argue that the multiple trips between Chicago and Mexico City portrayed in the novel reveal a historical migratory route between these two cities that dislocates the hierarchies between the Global North and the Global South. In Chapter Three, by analyzing Mexican-American writer Alejandro Morales’s novel, The Rag Doll Plagues (1992), I introduce the intrinsic mechanisms of spatial decolonization that allow to heal processes of segregation, aberrant social practices, and technological oppression in colonial Mexico City, postmodern Los Angeles, and the dystopian LAMEX. In Chapter Four, I analyze the material and immaterial connections between Mexico City and New York. In Valeria Luiselli’s Los ingrávidos (2011), I explore the ghostly, almost ethereal nature (ingravidez) of her protagonists –a young woman living in Mexico City, and the Mexican poet Gilberto Owen in New York. I argue that these iii characters or urban ghosts represent transitional subjectivities that flow between temporal, spatial and gender contexts: from past memories to present situations; from the overwhelming streets of New York to the secluded space of a house in Mexico City; from a female voice to a male narrative. iv The dissertation of Alejandro Ramírez Méndez is approved. Efraín Kristal Jesús Torrecilla Abel Valenzuela Héctor Calderón, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE 22 Trans-Urban Intersectionality: Mexico City / Chicago CHAPTER TWO 70 Way Back Home: Mexico City / Chicago CHAPTER THREE 108 Blood and Deconstruction: Mexico City / Los Angeles CHAPTER FOUR 160 Trans-Urban Ghosts: Mexico City / New York CONCLUSION 205 Trans-Urban Sanctuaries: Little L.A. and the Roar to Come WORKS CITED 215 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Quiero agradecer profundamente a todas las personas que de una u otra forma fueron parte vital de esta disertación. First I would like to thank the Chair of my committee, Professor Héctor Calderón. Without his friendship, mentorship and hard work through my doctoral studies, I could not have completed this dissertation: una plática en el centro de Tlalpan, un bread pudding con chocolate oaxaqueño, muchas risas y un poco de rock mexicano en nuestra vida nos enseñaron que teníamos un destino en común. Gracias Profe. I would also like to acknowledge my doctoral committee members: Professor Efraín Kristal, Professor Jesús Torrecilla, and Professor Abel Valenzuela. Their wisdom, guidance and enthusiasm show me new means to understand the Latin American, Spanish and Mexican-American culture. I am deeply grateful to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for supporting me through my doctoral studies. Thanks go to Gloria Tovar for her patience and dedication, as well as all the staff that was always willing to answer all my questions. Thanks go also to the Faculty that enlighten my path through all these years, and challenge my knowledge. Thanks go also to UC Mexus and CONACYT, and the economic support that these institutions provided me. I am also deeply grateful to the Professors in other Departments (Chicana/o Studies, Comparative Literature, English, German Studies, Urban Planning) that teach me alternative perspectives to understand academia, while enhancing my interdisciplinary skills. I would like to thank the Urban Humanities Initiative (UHI) for the valuable experience it provide me while understanding spatial justice in LA and in Mexico City, vii and the core faculty and people behind this wonderful project: Dana Cuff, Todd Presner, Maite Zubiaurre, Jonathan Crisman, and Jonathan Banfil. I would also like to thanks Professor Kenneth Reinhard, director of the program in Experimental Critical Theory (ECT), for his outstanding devotion to critical thinking, and its dissemination among young scholars. I would also like to thank all my fellow graduate students in the Department Spanish and Portuguese and outside from it whom I share a little step in this journey. Special thanks to my cohort: nos ayudamos en las situaciones más difíciles, y siempre salimos adelante. I would also like to thanks my friends in Mexico: yo sé que están lejos, y que siempre fue difícil visitarlos, pero siempre estuvieron muy cerca en mis pensamientos. Thank you to my family: mi querida Má, mi querido Apá, Rayinski, mis hermanitos el Sebas y la Miriamsita, mi querida Alita y mi chula sobrinita Daphne, mis queridos abuelitos (Ceci, María de la Luz, Juán, Memo), Miriam, Naty Grande y Miguel que también ya son parte de mi familia, y todos mis prim@s y tí@s que son muchos y no caben en este mínimo espacio. Thank you Carmelito: en cierta manera tu llegada coincidió con esta disertación. Finally, thank you to my beautiful and intelligent partner Natalia, for her love, her patience, and her sacrifice: gracias por este hermoso viaje que ha sido nuestra vida y por las muchas metas que aún nos quedan por conquistar. viii VITA 2007 B.A. in Literature and Language Sciences suma cum laude Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, Mexico 2010 M.A. in Literary Studies/Literatuurwetenschap Leiden University, The Netherlands 2013-2018 UC MEXUS-CONACYT Fellowship UC Mexus and CONACYT 2014-2018 Teaching Associate Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of California, Los Angeles 2015 Summer Research Mentorship Graduate Division University of California, Los Angeles PUBLICATIONS Ramírez, Alejandro et al. “Seeking Literary Justice: La Caja Mágica en Boyle Heights.” BOOM: A Journal of California. 2016. Ramírez, Alejandro et al. “Equiparte: Cosmopolitanism, Conflict, Translation. ” Urban Humanities in the Borderlands: Engaged Scholarship from Mexico City to Los Angeles. 2016. Ramírez, Alejandro. “En la mente de la sin razón.” El Quijote, 400 años después. 2005. PRESENTATIONS “(Trans)cending Urbanity: Trans-Urban Narratives, Decolonial Landscapes and the Recognition of Cultural Identity in Alejandro Morales’s The Rag Doll Plagues,” Performing the Urban: Embodiment, Inventories, Rhythms. 16th Triennial EACLALS Conference. Oviedo, Spain, 2016. “Hyper-aesthetics of Greater Mexico: Héctor Calderón’s Narratives of Greater Mexico and the Hyper-aesthetics of the Border Culture,” Cityscapes: Urban and Human Cartographies. 10th International Conference on Chicano Literature and Latino Studies. Madrid, Spain, 2016. ix “México fuera de México: Octavio Paz y la producción de un imaginario mexicano en Estados Unidos,” TAN LEJOS DE DIOS / SO FAR FROM GOD. XVII Colloquium on Mexican literature. University of California, Santa Barbara, 2015. “Apocalyptical Chicanotopia: Los Angeles (Chicano space) in the Narrative of John Rechy,” Cityscapes: Urban and Human Cartographies. 9th International Conference on Chicano Literature and Latino Studies.