Domestic Negotiations - (Latinidad: Transnational Cultures in the United States) by Marci R McMahon (Paperback)

About the Book

Domestic Negotiations explores how U.S. Mexicana and Chicana authors and artists across different historical periods and regions use domestic space to actively claim their own histories. Drawing from a range of archival sources and cultural productions, the book demonstrates how the very sites of domesticity are used to engage with the many political and recurring debates about race, gender, and immigration affecting the lives of Mexicanas and Chicanas from the early twentieth century to today.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2014 NACCS Tejas Non-Fiction Book Award

This interdisciplinary study explores how US Mexicana and Chicana authors and artists across different historical periods and regions use domestic space to actively claim their own histories. Through "negotiation"--a concept that accounts for artistic practices outside the duality of resistance/accommodation--and "self-fashioning," Marci R. McMahon demonstrates how the very sites of domesticity are used to engage the many political and recurring debates about race, gender, and immigration affecting Mexicanas and Chicanas from the early twentieth century to today.

Domestic Negotiations covers a range of archival sources and cultural productions, including the self-fashioning of the "chili queens" of San Antonio, Texas, Jovita González's romance novel Caballero, the home economics career and cookbooks of Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, Sandra Cisneros's "purple house controversy" and her acclaimed text The House on Mango Street, Patssi Valdez's self-fashioning and performance of domestic space in Asco and as a solo artist, Diane Rodríguez's performance of domesticity in Hollywood television and direction of domestic roles in theater, and Alma López's digital prints of domestic labor in Los Angeles. With intimate close readings, McMahon shows how Mexicanas and Chicanas shape domestic space to construct identities outside of gendered, racialized, and xenophobic rhetoric.

Review Quotes

"An original, elegantly written, and exciting approach to domesticity scholarship. McMahon shows how Mexicanas, Mexican American women, and Chicanas reconfigured domestic space into interpretive power to author their own histories in public spaces of performance, visual art, and print culture."--Marta E. Sánchez "Arizona State University" (1/15/2013 12:00:00 AM)

"With depth and clarity, McMahon offers a highly valued analysis of Chicana and Mexicana women who negotiate the domesticated gendered body . . . an important and timely contribution to the field."--Ellie D. Hernandez "University of California, Santa Barbara" (9/5/2012 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

MARCI R. McMAHON is an assistant professor in the English department at the University of Texas, Pan American.