Contemporary United States women of color theorize subversion through cross-genre writing

Ethnic minority cross-genre texts are collections of subverted mainstream canonical traditions and conventions. Cross-genre writing challenges traditional notions about what genre is through content and form. Cross-genre is revolutionary because it refuses to be categorized with the traditional genres, and it is subversive because it refuses to belong to any of these genres creating a new context of discourse.; This dissertation will cover four ethnic groups of women writers and their development of cross-genre writing. The first chapter will discuss the formation of cross-genre writing and its connection to women of color. Then, each chapter will examine a number of cross-genre writers from one ethnic group by focusing on one text and using other supplementary texts to complement specific themes. Each chapter adopts critical and literary theories that range from postmodernism, postcolonialism, poststructuralism, and cultural studies—all of which are carried out in a postfeminist framework. The second chapter will examine texts by Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Pat Mora, and Judith Ortiz Cofer. The third chapter will examine texts by Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and Sonia Sanchez. The fourth chapter explores texts written by Leslie Marmon Silko, Paula Gunn Allen, Luci Tapahonso, and Linda Hogan. The fifth chapter will explore texts by Janice Mirikitani, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Jessica Hagedorn.; All of the cross-genre texts address the question of the politics of multiple identities from a position that seeks to integrate ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and language. What is unique about these cross-genre texts is that they do not tend to privilege any genre over another. The concluding chapter designates that cross-genre writing is a new creative way for ethnic women writers to theorize their experience in radical and innovative terms. Cross-genre writers create a new discourse, which seeks to incorporate aspects of their gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and feminist politics.