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IMPOSSIBLY HERE, IMPOSSIBLY QUEER: CITIZENSHIP, SEXUALITY, AND GAY CHICANO FICTION

de la Garza Valenzuela, José A.
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6986-5999
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1460677739

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, English.
Advocacy for the rights of undocumented migrants and members of the LGBT community have emerged as defining social justice movements in the early 21st century in the U.S. In both movements, citizenship has been invoked as a legal category of particular concern, the first advocating for a pathway to documented status leading to citizenship and the second asserting that denying same-sex couples the right to marry renders gay and lesbian communities second-class citizens. This dissertation uses the contemporary deployment of citizenship as point of departure, arguing against understandings of the category as defined by inclusivity. Exclusion, I argue, is a defining trait of citizenship, one that allows us to reorient considerations of cultural and legal membership in the U.S. Rather than considering citizenship as the site where disenfranchisement is resolved, I use the failures of citizenship as an analytical point of departure guided not by an interest in citizenship as a site of justice, but instead as a legal institution that insists on the impossibility of non-normative identity categories. In doing so, I turn my attention to legal, historical, and/or literary moments where our commitment to citizenship has failed to ascertain rights for queer and migrant communities. To interrogate the limits of citizenship, I analyze works by gay Chicano writers where I locate historical intersections of queer and migrant narratives that attend to depicting the limitations of citizenship. In each chapter, I pair a novel with a historical context that function as a legal setting for the disenfranchisement of queer migrant people. The first chapter considers the impossibility of culturally or legally identifying as citizen in John Rechy’s iconic City of Night in the context of anti-sodomy laws upheld in Bowers v. Hardwick. In the second, I analyze the retroactive criminalization of queer identity in The Rain God by Arturo Islas in the legal context of Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Chapter three discusses the contemporary surveillance of migrant communities in Arizona’s SB 1070 in relationship to Rigoberto Gonzalez’s Crossing Vines. The final chapter considers the depiction of queer exclusion, inclusion, and coming out during the Mariel boatlift in the graphic novel Sexile by Chicano artist Jaime Cortez. In the works here analyzed, I argue, citizenship functions as a political tool that incentivizes normative compliance, making queer and/or migrant communities subject to citizenship rather than creating an egalitarian possibility for the emergence of a queer migrant citizen subject.
Stefanie Dunning, Dr. (Committee Co-Chair)
Julie Minich, Dr. (Committee Co-Chair)
Madelyn Detloff, Dr. (Committee Member)
Anita Mannur, Dr. (Committee Member)
Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr., Dr. (Committee Member)
191 p.
American Literature; American Studies; Ethnic Studies; Gender Studies; Hispanic American Studies; Legal Studies; Literature; Minority and Ethnic Groups
Latina and Latino Studies; Chicana and Chicano Studies; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Queer Studies; Queer Masculinity; Citizenship; Immigration Laws

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • de la Garza Valenzuela, J. A. (2016). IMPOSSIBLY HERE, IMPOSSIBLY QUEER: CITIZENSHIP, SEXUALITY, AND GAY CHICANO FICTION [Doctoral dissertation, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1460677739

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • de la Garza Valenzuela, José. IMPOSSIBLY HERE, IMPOSSIBLY QUEER: CITIZENSHIP, SEXUALITY, AND GAY CHICANO FICTION . 2016. Miami University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1460677739.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • de la Garza Valenzuela, José. "IMPOSSIBLY HERE, IMPOSSIBLY QUEER: CITIZENSHIP, SEXUALITY, AND GAY CHICANO FICTION ." Doctoral dissertation, Miami University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1460677739

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

miami1460677739
382
© 2016, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Miami University and OhioLINK.