Details

Abstract / Summary

Accessible Citizenships examines Chicana/o cultural representations that conceptualize political community through images of disability. Working against the assumption that disability is a metaphor for social decay or political crisis, Julie Avril Minich analyzes literature, film, and visual art post-1980 in which representations of nonnormative bodies work to expand our understanding of what it means to belong to a political community. Minich shows how queer writers like Arturo Islas and Cherríe Moraga have reconceptualized Chicano nationalism through disability images. She further addresses how the U.S.-Mexico border and disabled bodies restrict freedom and movement. Finally, she confronts the changing role of the nation-state in the face of neoliberalism as depicted in novels by Ana Castillo and Cecile Pineda. Accessible Citizenships illustrates how these works gesture toward less exclusionary forms of citizenship and nationalism. Minich boldly argues that the corporeal images used to depict national belonging have important consequences for how the rights and benefits of citizenship are understood and distributed.

Field of Interest

Disability Studies

Author

Julie A. Minich, 1977-

Copyright Message

Copyright © 2013 Temple University

Content Type

Book

Duration

0 sec

Format

Text

Original Publication Date

2014

Page Count

241

Publication Year

2014

Publisher

Temple University Press

Place Published / Released

Philadelphia, PA

Subject

Disability Studies, Diversity, Race, Class, Sexuality & Gender, Nationalism, Disabilities, Gender, Class, Economic status, Raza, Clase, Sexualidad y Genero, Raça, Classe, Sexualidade e Gênero, Sexuality, Mexico, Early 21st Century United States (2001– ), Late 20th Century (1975–2000)

Keywords and Translated Subjects

Gender, Class, Economic status, Raza, Clase, Sexualidad y Genero, Raça, Classe, Sexualidade e Gênero, Sexuality