Becoming a Nueva Latina: Transforming Identity Politics in the United States in 10 Easy Steps
Chica Lit provides a voice to a different generation of Latinas. This new genre attempts to capture the experiences of Latinas beyond first generation in the United States. Thus I studied the ways in which Latina identity has shifted and its current representation in this particular genre. This project simultaneously engaged in textual analysis of literary texts while examining them in an intertextual context. While I intended to closely examine the commodification of Latina identity depicted in Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps by Lara Rios, I also juxtaposed this body of work to that of the popular self help book The Latina's Bible: The Nueva Latina's Guide to Love, Spirituality, Family, and La Vida by Sandra Guzman.. This project was fundamentally concerned with the ways identity is articulated in these texts and its relationship to their readers. Through an analysis of family, relationships, and community, in both books I was able to define this relationship and find that while a Nueva Latina identity is being created there are aspects of previous generations that seem to contradict this new shift.
School:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department:
English
Research Advisor:
Isabel Molina
Department of Research Advisor:
Latina/Latino Studies
Year of Publication:
2008