ERIC Number: EJ880841
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0005-2604
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Available Date: N/A
Toward a Borderlands Ethics: The Undocumented Migrant and Haunted Communities in Contemporary Chicana/o Fiction
Ramirez, Pablo A.
Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v35 n1 p49-67 Spr 2010
By reading Helena Maria Viramontes's "Cariboo Cafe" and Daniel Chacon's "Godoy Lives," this essay argues that Chicana/o fiction articulates what I call a "borderlands ethics." Both Viramontes and Chacon give the undocumented migrant the power to merge the United States and Latin America, self and other, citizen and noncitizen. These mergers demonstrate how a borderlands ethical stance can produce new unauthorized truths and relations outside the law and beyond national borders. However, these stories of ghostly kinship also produce a political imperative: to resurrect borderlands relations and experiences in the public sphere. Through the trope of haunting and an engagement with a borderlands ethics, "The Cariboo Cafe" and "Godoy Lives" help us understand that maintaining a Latina/o ethnic identity is not a simple act of preservation; it is an ethico-political project that challenges the United States to form new visions of democracy and new relations with Latin America in order to maintain transborder communities and families.
Descriptors: Ethnicity, Democracy, Foreign Countries, Ethics, Migrants, Hispanic American Literature, Fiction, Undocumented Immigrants, Laws, Self Concept, Foreign Policy
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. 193 Haines Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1544. Tel: 310-794-9380; Tel: 310-825-2642; Fax: 310-206-1784; e-mail: press@chicano.ucla.edu; Web site: http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/press
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United States
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