| This dissertation examines various ways that family has been employed as a model of both oppression and liberation in Latina/o literature. Working from an interdisciplinary standpoint at the crossroads of literary and cultural studies, women's, gender, and sexuality studies, Chicano/a studies, and Latino/a studies, this project seeks to uncover how representations of familia in U.S. Latino/a literary texts accomplish their discursive work, as well as complicating conventional formulations of kinship and family.;I examine Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas, in Chapter One, in terms of queer family and the counter-domestic logic of "the streets." In Chapter Two, I explore the ways that nationalism and family are intertwined in two Cuban American texts: The Aguero Sisters , by Cristina Garcia, and We Came All The Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? by Achy Obejas. In Chapter Three, I use narratology as a way to examine the workings of patriarchy as a means of controlling the truth in Ana Castillo's So Far from God and Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao . Finally, I examine the trajectory of Cherrie Moraga's body of work in Chapter Four, from This Bridge Called My Back to A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness, arguing that Moraga's work, like a spirograph, spirals back to similar themes about family and identity while also changing significantly as she ages.;Each chapter employs different spatial frameworks to approach the texts, reflecting not only the heterogeneity of the work itself, but also the varied uses of "family" as a trope. In examining how these texts complicate chronology, authority, ethnicity, and heteronormativity, this dissertation argues for new, feminist possibilities for kinship beyond conventional domesticity. |
