Floating Borderlands: Chicanas and Mexicanas Moving Knowledge in the Borderlands

Abstract

As intolerance against Mexican Americans and Mexican migrants persists in the United States-- apparent in the passage of Arizona State Bill 1070, Arizona House Bill 2281, and multiple English-only laws-- Chicanas and Mexicanas continue to resist by sustaining relationships and knowledge through storytelling. This dissertation employs a floating borderlands framework to explore how Chicanas and Mexicanas in the United States-Mexico borderlands use storytelling in oral and written traditions to keep cultural and regional knowledge. Floating borderlands is an interdisciplinary framework that reveals survivance, that is, survival as an act of resistance, through cultural maintenance, agency, and creativity in lived experiences. Drawing upon concepts and research from disciplines that include Mexican American Studies, American Indian Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, and Education, floating borderlands reveals how storytelling helps Chicanas and Mexicanas maintain an understanding of home and homelands that facilitates resistance to obstacles such as racial and gender discrimination and challenges to their right to be in these spaces. This dissertation acknowledges multiple forms of knowledge keeping by Chicanas and Mexicanas throughout the last two centuries; recognizes intersectionality; and complicates or creates multiple layers in narratives of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. This project is directly informed by narratives of Chicana and Mexicana life in the borderlands. It centers oral and written traditions, including my original poetry. Key words: Chicanas, Mexicanas, border, borderlands, floating borderlands, survivance, oral traditions, written traditions, home, homelands, migration, identity, cultural maintenance, poetry, story.