Gender and Allegory in Trans-American Fiction and Performance »

Katherine Sugg is Assistant Professor of English, Central Connecticut State University. Her essays on comparative narrative and cultural theory of the Americas have appeared in various journals including Meridians: Feminism, Transnationalism, Activism; Narrative; and CR: The New Centennial Review.

By rethinking contemporary debates regarding the politics of aesthetic forms, Gender and Allegory in Transamerican Fiction and Performance explores how allegory can be used to resolve the “problem” of identity in both political theory and literary studies. Examining fiction and performance from Zoé Valdés and Cherríe Moraga to Def Poetry Jam and Carmelita Tropicana, Sugg suggests that the representational oscillations of allegory can reflect and illuminate the fraught dynamics of identity discourses and categories in the Americas. Using a wide array of theoretical and aesthetic sources from the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, this book argues for the crucial and potentially transformative role of feminist cultural production in transamerican public cultures.

Preface: Gender and Allegorical Pedagogies in the Americas

1 Cultural Politics in Transamerica: Identity, Narrativity, and Allegory 1

2 "The Ultimate Rebellion": Political Fictions of Chicana Sexuality and Community 39

3 Apocalyptic Modernities: Transamerican Allegory, Revolution, and Indigeneity in Almanac of the Dead 67

4 Allegory and Transcultural Ethics: Narrating Difference in Rosario Castellanos's Oficio de tinieblas 101

5 Encrypted Diasporas: Writing, Affect, and the Nation in Zoe Valdes's Cafe Nostalgia 135

6 Performing Suspended Migrations: Novels and Solo Performance Art by U.S. Latinas 163

Notes 195

Bibliography 217

Index 229