The Routledge Handbook of Latinx Life Writing

Maria Joaquina Villaseñor (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Associate Dean of Liberal Arts at Sierra College. Previously she was a Professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies in the Department of Humanities and Communication and co-founder of the Ethnic Studies Working Group at California State University, Monterey Bay. Villaseñor is the co-editor of Latinx Experiences: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2023), a co-author of The Historical Dictionary of U.S. Latino Literature (2017); a Latina life writer herself, her personal essays have been published in journals including The Acentos Review. Dr. Villaseñor’s family is from Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, Mexico. She is a twin, a mother of twins, and a lifelong Californian. Christine J. Fernández is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her scholarship focuses on Hemispheric connections between Latin America and the United States and its intersections with gender studies and life writing. Her work has been published in journals such as eHumanista, Studies on Latin American Popular Culture, and Hispania.

Introduction

Maria Joaquina Villaseñor

PART 1: Historical Approaches and Memory in Latinx Life Writing

1 “A Race Equal To, If Not Better Than, Theirs”: 19th‑CenturyCalifornio Testimonios

Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz

2 With a Pencil in Their Hand: The Corrido as Life Writing

Ric Alviso

3 “I Will Never Deny What I am”: Masculinity in Oral Life Stories with Latine Vietnam Veterans

Tomás F. Summers Sandoval Jr.

4 Fictional and Nonfictional Memory: Exploring the Liminal Spaces of History and Memory in Latinx Life Writing

Daniel Luis Archer

5 Genealogies in 21st‑Century Latina Life Writing: Memory, History, and Storytelling

Jennifer Geraci

PART II: Migration, Exile and Borders in Latinx Life Writing

6 Cartographies of Hispanic and Latinx Travel Writing: Discourses of Origins, Nations, and Exploration

Christine J. Fernández

7 Women’s Auto/biography in the Mexico‑United States Borderscape, 1942–968: Elisa M. del Valle, Celia Trevino Carranza, and Consuelo Pena de Villarreal Elizondo

Paulo Alvarado

8 Latina/o/x Autobiographical Narratives of Exile: Examples from Cuba and Chile

Lucía M. Suárez

9 Latinx Life Writers of South American Origin or Heritage

Cynthia Martínez

10 Coming Out as Undocumented Through Personal Narrative, 2006–2016

Leah Butterfield

PART III: Chicana/Latina Feminisms and Life Writing

11 How Latina Theater Found a Voice

Leigh Johnson

12 Chicana Feminist Life Writing: Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua, and Necessary Transgressions of Genre

R. Joyce Z. L. Garay

13 Undisciplining Academia through Feminista Testimonio Writing

Rebeca Burciaga, Dolores Delgado Bernal, C. Alejandra Elenes, and Judith Flores Carmona

14 Chicanx and Latinx Feminist Testimonios

Ana Roncero‑Bellido

15 ¿Y Yo Tambien?: Sexual Assault Narratives in Chicana Memoirs

Melissa Castillo Planas

PART IV: Inscribing Race, Gender and Sexuality in Latinx Life Writing

16 Writing from the Wound: Contemporary Latinx Writing as Racial Identity in Process

Dominique Aurilla Vargas

17 The Afro‑Latino Memoir

Trent Masiki

18 Mapping Motherhood, Parenting, and Queer Care as Rebirth in Chicana/Latina Life Writing

Marivel T. Danielson

19 LGBTQ+ Latinx Poetry as Life Writing

Edward A. Chamberlain

20 Disidentifications: New York City as Space for (Dis)Encounters in Latinx Queer Literature

José Acosta‑Seda

21 From Grindr Advice Column to Memoir: Latinx Life Writing Online and the Queer Latinx Care Work of John Paul Brammer’s “!Hola Papi!” Series

Jennifer M. Lozano and Katie R. Peel

PART V: Latinx Life Writing: Signature Themes and Genres

22 Vulnerability: Finding a Latinx Approach to Life Writing

Ruth Behar

23 Automitografia: Empowerment and Cultural Resistance in Chicanx Life Writing

Juan Velasco

24 Transformative Testimony and Lamentation: Latinx Protest Poetry as a New World of Witnessing

Francisco E. Robles

25 Latinx Coming‑of‑Age Memoirs, 1961–2022

Regina Marie Mills

26 Latinx Life Writing in Comics and Graphic Novels

Samantha Ceballos