User:Domingo2704/sandbox

Queer Latinas in Speculative Fiction

Speculative fiction is a literary genre that encompasses the supernatural, futuristic, and unknown among other themes. It has become an avenue for writers from underrepresented groups to share their futuristic worlds and express their concern about the current societal issues impacting their community. Underrepresented writers such as queer Latinas gain social agency through speculative fiction. These writers are not only demanding social recognition and change, but the revindication of social norms. Authors like Cherri Moraga challenge social heteronormativity by creating alternate realities that represent the struggles of non-conforming individuals. These fictitious societies highlight the Eurocentered capitalist norms and demark the gender/cultural and sexual differences. Moraga uses her writing as a form of activism to advocate not only for gays and lesbians, but for the queer community. Moraga’s philosophy is connected to Queer theory, which emerges from feminist theory and gay/lesbian studies as a new branch of study that challenges hegemonic social constructions and deviant sexual behaviors. In the Hungry Woman, Cherri Moraga have developed a new nation of Aztlan, which represents a utopia that stills internalizes the phobias of the Chicano movement. The Hungry Woman is an intervention of the exciting sexist and homophobic narratives in the history of Latin America. These narratives are derived from the colonization of the Americas and the forced assimilation of the European culture. The concepts of gender and sexuality are borrowed from the Europeans and enforced as a system of subordination where non-conforming individuals are at the bottom. Moraga’s alternative universe demonstrates the revolutionary struggle of Aztlan and the hardship of the queer communities, which are thrown into exile for not assuming the Eurocentered hegemonic and capitalist notions of gender. Aztlan enforces the establishment of European gender and sexuality by depicting the hierarchical differences between male and female, heterosexual, homosexual, and lesbians. Queer Latina writers seek the rejection of finite identities and social norms that enforces sexual binary.