UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Conocimiento Narratives: Challenging Oppressive Epistemologies Through Healing in Latina/o Children’s and Young Adult Literature A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez August 2015 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Traise Yamamoto, Chairperson Dr. Erica Edwards Dr. Phillip Serrato Copyright by Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez 2015 The Dissertation of Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Completion of this dissertation project was made possible by the following funding sources: Eugene-Cota-Robles Fellowship, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment Mini-Grant, the Queer Lab Research Grant, the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States, the Graduate Research Mentoring Program Fellowship, and the University of California Dissertation Year Fellowship. A section in the dissertation’s introduction was previously published in Encyclopedia of Latino Culture: From Calaveras to Quinceañeras. iv DEDICATION Para mi mami. Upon arriving to this country my mother made sure to enroll my sister and me in school. She did not speak English, did not know her way around her new neighborhood, and could not drive but somehow she made sure we were able to go to school. I obtained my first pair of glasses in the first grade only because my mom bartered cleaning services for them. While the glasses were adult frames and were literally half the size of my tiny face, my mom cleaned the optometrist office for a long time just so that I could see the chalkboard. My mother has lived a tough life but her support of my educational pursuits has never wavered. Although it was not clear to her why I had to leave home to attend college she did not stop me. And even though she did not quite understand my decision to move across the country to continue going to school, she believed, more than I did, that I would do well. Mami, le regalo mi doctorado porque sin su apoyo, su fe, y su amor no podria haber consequirlo. Sin usted todo lo que he logrado no valdria la pena. Muchisimas gracias. La quiero un chingo. To Dr. Traise Yamamoto, Dr. Phillip Serrato, and Dr. Erica Edwards. I feel very blessed to have had you all as part of my committee. I cannot possibly thank you enough for your mentorship. You saw potential and greatness in me and my project and for that I am very grateful. I have learned a great deal from your scholarship, your courses, and your teaching. Dr. Edwards, thank you for your mentorship and your feedback. Dr. Serrato, thank you for your honesty and your kindness. Dr. Yamamoto, your support means the world to me. Thank you so much. v To Ms. Socorro Huerta and the Youth Opportunity Center. Thank you for taking a chance on me and for welcoming me into your youth center. Not only did you support my ideas but you encouraged me to be me. Socorro, you never tried to quiet me or to discipline me. Instead, you let me a smart ass, you let me be loud, and you let me bossy. Thank you for that. Much love and gratitude to the youth that stuck by as the “R’side of the Story” project developed. Jennifer, Kimberly, and Luis, y’all were part my inspiration to push through the tough times and cross the finish line. Thank you to the other staff at the center that supported me: Reggie, Paula, Jennifer, Gabbi, Caleb, Melvin, and Michael. And finally a big thank you to Ronald Del Cid for supporting my creative madness and believing we could make a difference. Thank you for the mural with my face on it and for painting butterflies on everything you could. You became my safe space and I’m truly honored to call you my friend. To my friends. Thank you, Sara Espinosa and Cindy San Miguel for your friendship and an unwavering support. Thank you to both of you for always finding me when I get lost in my own head. Thank you to my hermana in the graduate school struggle, Tracy Zuniga. We decided to be in it together since that first day at orientation when we sat next to each other. We promised that “if you quit I quit.” Thanks for not quitting. Thanks for the long nights of writing and reading. Thanks for sharing your family with me. Thanks for becoming my family. Lastly, thank you to Dr. Regis Mann for being a great friend and an excellent role model. Thank you to my younger siblings Gabriela Talia, Martin, and Priscilla. My decision to pursue higher education hit y’all the hardest because that meant I had to leave vi and I know that for a long time that felt like I had abandoned you. I hope you understand now that I left to find, create, and pave alternative paths for all of you. You can choose to walk them or to venture out on your own and make your own paths. I will always support you. My dissertation project was written with y’all in mind and my desire to help all of us find our way toward healing. I hope I have made you proud. I love you more than all the words in all the books in the world. vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Conocimiento Narratives: Challenging Oppressive Epistemologies through Healing in Latina/o Children’s and Young Adult Literature by Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, August 2015 Dr. Traise Yamamoto, Chairperson I introduce the concept of “conocimiento narratives” in my dissertation as a lens to understand Latina/o children’s and young adult literature and as a means to engage in conversations about healing in the lives of Latina/o children. I adapt Chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa’s articulation of “conocimiento,” which she describes as the process of using knowledge for healing, in order to emphasize the different ways this literature represents the oppressions Latina/o children in the United States face and the ways those oppressions are challenged via healing processes. In the course of this dissertation, I provide analyses of realist fiction by authors such as Juan Felipe Herrera, Charles Rice-González, Rigoberto González, and Rene Colato Laínez to explore how structures of knowing and healing impact the various subject positions Latina/o children take. Chapter 1 of the dissertation introduces conocimiento narratives by examining the creative acts of young Latina characters in order to demonstrate how traditional künstlerromane, novels of artistic development, exclude issues of race and ethnicity from its definition of artist. Texts like Luis J. Rodriguez’s América is Her Name allow me to viii highlight the use of art to promote healing in the lives of Latina girls. Chapter 2 investigates how absent fathers, who are “absent” due to immigration status, incarceration, and illness, inform their sons’ conocimiento process and constructions of Latino masculinity. Through Juan Felipe Herrera’s Downtown Boy, for example, I examine how Mr. Palomares’s search for water that will heal his diabetes is at odds with his son’s own conocimiento process. Chapter 3 presents conocimiento as an alternative to the oppressive forces of homonationalism in queer Latino young adult novels and moves toward a holistic queer Latino identity. By examining Charles González-Rice’s Chulito I complicate the notion that Latino youth must leave their neighborhood in order to be openly queer. Chapter 4 follows Trinidad Ramos, a Latina transgender character in Rigoberto González’s The Mariposa Club trilogy, through her senior year and examines the violence that she experiences for identifying as transgender and the ways that conocimiento serves as a means to survive. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One Conocimiento Narratives: (Re)Imagining the Künstlerroman for Latina Girls in Latina/o Children’s And Young Adult Literature….……………………………………………...29 Chapter Two “You wanna be a chump/or a champ?”: Constructions of Masculinity, Absent Fathers, and Conocimiento in Latina/o Children’s and Young Adult Literature…………………64 Chapter Three Latino and Queer: Challenging Homonationalism in Latino Young Adult Conocimiento Narratives……………………………………………………………………………….103 Chapter Four “Fierce And Fearless”: Dress and Conocimiento in Rigoberto González’s The Mariposa Club Trilogy…………………………………………………………………………….139 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...…177 x Introduction There aren’t many photographs of my childhood. Those that do exist were taken once my family moved to the US but even those gradually got lost as we moved from apartment to apartment. There are significantly more pictures of me in my teens holding my baby brother or my baby sister. From the ages of 13 to about 16 I am holding, feeding, rocking, or playing with a baby. It could easily be assumed by looking at the photographs that I may be holding my own children. While I obviously looked young in the pictures I was still old to enough to bear children and I was brown enough to have that possibly be my experience. There are a few photos where my sister is holding a baby and I’m in the background reading a book. As the oldest child in my family, it was my responsibility to help my mother care for the younger children—which was captured by the pictures of me holding babies for most of my teens. Those photos of me holding babies were emblematic of the possibilities for my life. Because I was undocumented, Mexican, and a woman the possibilities for my future were limited. From a young age I was being groomed by my parents for the only life they knew—a life where I took care of children and a husband.