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Trans-Urban Narratives: Literary Cartographies and Global Cities in the Urban Imagination of Mexico and the U.S.

Abstract

This dissertation examines how narratives from Mexican and Mexican-American writers interconnect urban landscapes and cultures in the transnational context of the twenty-first century. This study focuses on what I call “trans-urban narratives,” a method of literary analysis by comparing the urban environment of Mexico City with three global centers in the U.S.: Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. In these narratives, Mexican writers (Valeria Luiselli and Juan Villoro) and Mexican-American writers (Sandra Cisneros and Alejandro Morales) portray the transitional experience of their protagonists within two global cities, two urban realities located in opposite sides of the U.S./Mexico border. They create bi-national and hemispheric connections through the juxtaposition of urban landscapes from both countries. While in the twentieth century urban narratives focus mainly in one specific urban environment, my project argues that in the twenty-first century the Mexican and Mexican-American literary productions are building transnational spaces within the city that allow the cross-border communication of their cultures.

In Chapter One, I examine the intersection, interconnection and fusion of Mexico City and Chicago in post-national narratives. I analyze the short story “Chicago” (2008) by Juan Villoro, focusing on how the main character –a Mexican taxi driver who has lived in the United States– produces a mental map by overlapping the geographies of Mexico City and Chicago. I argue that this alternative cartography draws a new geopolitical space that eliminates cultural boundaries.

In Chapter Two, I continue the social, political and cultural exploration of Chicago and Mexico City but through the analysis of Caramelo (2002) by Sandra Cisneros. In this chapter, I argue that the multiple trips between Chicago and Mexico City portrayed in the novel reveal a historical migratory route between these two cities that dislocates the hierarchies between the Global North and the Global South.

In Chapter Three, by analyzing Mexican-American writer Alejandro Morales's novel, The Rag Doll Plagues (1992), I introduce the intrinsic mechanisms of spatial decolonization that allow to heal processes of segregation, aberrant social practices, and technological oppression in colonial Mexico City, postmodern Los Angeles, and the dystopian LAMEX.

In Chapter Four, I analyze the material and immaterial connections between Mexico City and New York. In Valeria Luiselli's Los ingrávidos (2011), I explore the ghostly, almost ethereal nature (ingravidez) of her protagonists –a young woman living in Mexico City, and the Mexican poet Gilberto Owen in New York. I argue that these characters or urban ghosts represent transitional subjectivities that flow between temporal, spatial and gender contexts: from past memories to present situations; from the overwhelming streets of New York to the secluded space of a house in Mexico City; from a female voice to a male narrative.

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