ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE U.S. LATINA BOOM: THE FORMATION OF A FEMINIST LITERARY MOVEMENT, 1984-2000 Kara Ann Morillo, Doctor of Philosophy, 2017 Dissertation directed by: Professor Randy James Ontiveros Department of English The time period that spanned the late 1980s through the early 1990s saw an increase in production of U.S. Latina literature by women. Their production was so prolific it generated a Boom—a renaissance of Latina writing into the marketplace. This dissertation revisits what we may think of as a watershed moment in literary history and popular culture. I examine the impact of the Latina Boom on American literature writ large and on the U.S. publishing industry. Reading against arguments about the mere mainstreaming of ethnic voices, I contend that Latina Boom writers strategically used their respective positions to initiate progressive cultural change within and by way of the literary mainstream. Further, I argue that the Boom spans a wider timeframe than usually acknowledged, extending from 1984 to 2000. What’s more, this extended Boom represents an ongoing a composite of multiple literary, social, and cultural movements that exceeds the bounds of the Boom as an ongoing process of revision, inspiration, and change. When viewed as a collective, intentional effort within the mainstream rather than as individual accomplishment before the masses, the Latina Boom can be better appreciated by scholars and readers for its impact on American publishing and literature. I argue that writers Sandra Cisneros, Cristina García, Julia Alvarez, Ana Castillo utilized the publishing market’s interest in them to make visible and marketable a feminist literary movement. The biggest outcome of the Boom has been the expansion of the American canon and mainstream marketplace to include more diverse voices in American literature, most notably by a younger generation of writers who found their inspiration in their groundbreaking predecessors. I conclude with a discussion on the Latina Boom’s beneficiaries, which includes authors Cristina Henriquez, Jennine Capó Crucet, Patricia Engel, and Kirsten Valdez Quade. THE U.S. LATINA BOOM: THE FORMATION OF A FEMINIST LITERARY MOVEMENT, 1984-2000 by Kara Ann Morillo Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Advisory Committee: Professor Randy James Ontiveros Professor Sharada Balachandran Orihuela Professor Linda Kauffman Professor Nancy Raquel Mirabal Professor Ana Patricia Rodríguez ©Copyright by Kara Ann Morillo 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am fortunate to have parents who never questioned my journey and allowed me to grow into my own as an individual. You were my first teachers, and you’ve instilled a deep love of reading in me from an early age. Thank you for always fostering my creativity, no matter what form it took. To my brother Mark, thanks for your humor and wisdom. To my advisor, thank you for your tireless feedback on my writing. I thank my committee members for their support over the years. Thank you to my friend, Dr. Christin “x10” Taylor, for reading my mind and my work. You are the midwife of my creative process. Thank you to Dr. Schuyler Esprit for your words of wisdom and for your virtual solidarity. To my former supervisors in the English Undergraduate Advising Office, Karen Lewis and Professor Thomas Moser: thank you for your constant encouragement and for letting me spread my wings. To Amy Merritt and Mark Perlman: I am infinitely grateful for our friendship. To Elise Auvil, for our many talks and for your support and humor. To my managers at the NFLC, Connie DiJohnson and Miranda Abadir: thank you for taking a chance on me and for allowing me to achieve my professional and academic goals. I am grateful to have landed here. My writing process was graced by the presence of my furball Josie, who sat at my feet while I wrote and purred in my lap when I needed comfort. ii In the time it took to complete this project, my family experienced the loss of my beloved godmother Rose-Lynn Liparulo and my dear aunt Dolores Morillo. The love they’ve given me during their time on Earth endures. I dedicate this project to the memory of my grandfather Francisco Fernández. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ ii INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER ONE From MFA to the Mainstream: The Beginning of a Movement in Sandra Cisneros’s Early Prose ........................................................................................................................ 26 CHAPTER TWO Reading Beyond the Market: Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban and the Reconsideration of American Literature .............................................................. 62 CHAPTER THREE “Every Revolution Needs a Chorus": Writing and Teaching as Feminist Revolution in Julia Alvarez’s In the Name of Salomé ............................................................................. 94 EPILOGUE Afterlives of the U.S. Latina Boom ................................................................................ 127 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 164 iv INTRODUCTION The time period that spanned the late 1980s through the early 1990s saw an increase in production of U.S. Latina literature by women. This literature included now familiar writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Ana Castillo, Helena María Viramontes, Judith Ortiz Cofer, and Denise Chávez. Their production was so prolific that it generated a Boom—a renaissance of Latina writing into the marketplace. Because of its flourishing into the market, the Boom is often framed as the entrance of Latino/a writers into the “mainstream” New York-based publishing world. This mainstreaming has been considered a crossover from small presses, such as Arte Público, into larger corporate publishing houses. Such crossovers granted Latino/a writers a wider reading audience through broad marketing campaigns. It propelled the careers of the aforementioned established writers into the mainstream, and it also ignited the writing careers of new voices, most prominently Cristina García, Achy Obejas, and Esmeralda Santiago. Notably, Latina women writers benefitted the most from the publishing market’s newfound interest in the U.S. Latino/a Boom writing and utilized this moment to make visible and marketable a feminist literary movement. By seizing upon this moment, they not only established a reputation for themselves but also collectively promoted a canon of U.S. literature written by Latina and Chicana women, merging the inclusion of diverse narratives with the demands of a marketplace hungry for new ethnic voices. My project “The U.S. Latina Boom: The Formation of a Feminist Literary Movement, 1984-2000” revisits what we may think of as a watershed moment in literary history and popular culture. I examine the impact of the Latina Boom on American 1 literature writ large and on the U.S. publishing industry. Reading against arguments about the mere mainstreaming of ethnic voices, I contend that Latina Boom writers strategically used their respective positions to initiate progressive cultural change within and by way of the literary mainstream. Further, I argue that the Boom spans a wider timeframe than usually acknowledged, extending from 1984 to 2000. What’s more, this extended Boom represents an ongoing a composite of multiple literary, social, and cultural movements that exceeds the bounds of the Boom as an ongoing process of revision, inspiration, and change. When viewed as a collective, intentional effort within the mainstream rather than as individual accomplishment before the masses, the Latina Boom can be better appreciated by scholars and readers for its impact on American publishing and literature. As we will see, the biggest outcome of the Boom has been the expansion of the American canon and mainstream marketplace to include more diverse voices in American literature, most notably by a younger generation of writers who found their inspiration in their groundbreaking predecessors. To understand the context of the Latina Boom, we must revisit the decades that preceded it, beginning with the 1960s. In Canons and Contexts, Paul Lauter regards the social and political movements of the 1960s and early 1970s as transforming the U.S. literary canon. These movements included civil rights, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, and the Young Lords and Chicano nationalist movements. Furthermore, the shifting population of students pressured universities to hire more diverse faculty members, including more women and minorities, and to add courses to the curriculum that centralized their experiences. Additionally, the entry of new faculty from historically marginalized groups into the academy precipitated the “canon wars,” or the academic 2 debate over which writers merited study in the university literature classroom. These new voices in the university questioned the exclusion of minority, queer and women writers from the canon, and consequently, from college literature courses (Lauter 8-9). Lauter defines the literary canon as “a means by which culture validates social power” (23). However, Latinas and Chicanas did not yet possess the