meXicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands

Rosa Linda Fregoso

Dec 2003 · Univ of California Press

About this ebook

meXicana Encounters charts the dynamic and contradictory representation of Mexicanas and Chicanas in culture. Rosa Linda Fregoso's deft analysis of the cultural practices and symbolic forms that shape social identities takes her across a wide and varied terrain. Among the subjects she considers are the recent murders and disappearances of women in Ciudad Juárez; transborder feminist texts that deal with private, domestic forms of violence; how films like John Sayles's Lone Star re-center white masculinity; and the significance of la familia to the identity of Chicanas/os and how it can subordinate gender and sexuality to masculinity and heterosexual roles. Fregoso's self-reflexive approach to cultural politics embraces the movement for social justice and offers new insights into the ways that racial and gender differences are inscribed in cultural practices.

Ratings and reviews

The book meXicana Encounters, The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands by Rosa Linda Fregoso is a serious critique of the portrayal of Latinas in film in the present as well as the past. The author delves deep to examine Latina characters, their identities, how they are “othered” by dominant white society, and what they represent to society. After some difficulty getting into the book, I found it very readable. I came to appreciate the author’s writing style: in spite of it containing many higher level vocabulary words, the way the she wrote was helpful and repetitive in a good way, which enabled me to follow the text and its arguments better. I like how she makes critical film review more accessible.

About the author

Rosa Linda Fregoso is Professor of Latin American/Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the editor of The Devil Never Sleeps and Other Films by Lourdes Portillo (2001), and the author of The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture (1993).