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What constitutes a border situation? How translatable and "portable" is the border? What are the borders of words surrounding the border? In its five sections, Border Transits: Literature and Culture across the Line intends to address these issues as it brings together visions of border dynamics from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The volume opens with "Part I: (B)orders and lines: A Theoretical Intervention," which explores the circle and the cross as spatial configurations of two contradictory urges, to separate and divide on the one hand, and to welcome and allow passage on the other. "Part II: Visions of the Mexican-US Border" zooms in onto the Mexican-United States border as it delves into the border transits between the two neighboring countries. But what happens when we situate the border on the cultural terrain? How well does the border travel? "Part III: Cultural Intersections" expands the border encounter as it deals with the different ways in which texts are encoded, registered, appropriated, mimicked and transformed in other cultural texts. "Part IV: Trans-Nations," addresses instances of trans-American relations stemming from experiences of up-rooting and intercultural contacts in the context of mass-migration and migratory flows. Finally, "Part V: Trans-Lations," deals with the ways in which the cultural borderlands suffuse other discourses and cultural practices. The volume is of interest for scholars and researchers in the field of Border studies, Chicano studies, "Ethnic Studies," as well as American Literature and Culture
E-Book Content
Border Transits Critical Approaches to Ethnic American Literature No 2 General Editors: Jesús Benito Sánchez (Universidad de Valladolid) Ana Mª Manzanas (Universidad de Salamanca) Editorial Board: Carmen Flys Junquera (Universidad de Alcalá) Aitor Ibarrola (Universidad de Deusto) Paul Lauter (Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut) Shirley Lim (U. California, Santa Barbara) Begoña Simal (Universidade da Coruña) Santiago Vaquera (Penn State University) Border Transits Literature and Culture across the Line Edited by Ana Mª Manzanas Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of "ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence". ISBN: 978-90-420-2249-2 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Printed in The Netherlands CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction Border Dynamics: From Terminus to Terminator Ana Mª Manzanas vii 1 Part I: (B)orders and Lines: A Theoretical Intervention Circles and Crosses: Reconsidering Lines of Demarcation Ana Mª Manzanas 9 Part II: Visions of the U.S.-Mexican Border Up against the Border: A Literary Response José Pablo Villalobos 35 Dispelling the Border Myth: Zonkey Writers and the Black Legend Édgar Cota-Torres 53 Border Voices: Life Writings and Self-Representation of the U.S.-Mexico Frontera Javier Durán 61 Postcards from the Border: In Tijuana, Revolución is an Avenue Santiago Vaquera 79 Part III: Cultural Intersections “To Hear Another Language”: Lifting the Veil between Langston Hughes and Federico García Lorca Isabel Soto 101 vi Contents The Brown/Mestiza Metaphor, or the Impertinence against Borders Isabel Durán 119 “A Wall of Barbed Lies”: Absent Borders in María Cristina Mena’s Short Fiction Begoña Simal 147 Part IV: Trans-Nations Ethnographies of Transnational Migration in Rubén Martínez’s Crossing Over (2001) Maria Antònia Oliver-Rotger 181 Mapping the Trans/Hispanic Atlantic: Nuyol, Miami, Tenerife, Tangier Manuel Martín-Rodrí