UC Irvine

In this dissertation I explore the literary imaginaries about the United States proposed in the 21st-century fictional works of Cristina Rivera Garza (Mexico), Edmundo Paz Soldán (Bolivia), and Alberto Fuguet (Chile); how the short stories and novels by these writers engage the complex relationship between Latin America and the United States through intertextuality. I specifically approach the intertextual connections of Ningún reloj cuenta esto (2002), La frontera más distante (2008), Norte (2011) and Missing (una investigación) (2009) through, memoria narrativa (narrative memory). Using M. Bakhtin’s critical proposals on genre and dialogism, I underline the implicit and explicit dialogues between the fictional works of Rivera Garza, Paz Soldán, Fuguet, civilization and barbarism, narratives of migration, detective fiction, border-crossing accounts, the genre of testimony, zombie, and the interview.

By highlighting the different discourses Rivera Garza, Paz Soldán, and Fuguet reformulate, and confront, I propose how these authors question contemporary issues of immigration, nation, and biculturalism. Additionally, I find that through the re-elaboration and re-contextualization of Latin American literary traditions, these authors set out to establish connections with the United States, but also to rethink the Latin American literary tradition from the United States, as a way of reflecting on historical predicaments, and their unresolved permanence.