but ive always been the wrong way : Chicana identity negotiations framed through sexuality and violence in Emma Pérez s Gulf dreams and Carla Trujillo s What night brings

Abstract

The present work aims at investigating two decolonial novels, Gulf Dreams (1996) and What Night Brings (2003) written, respectively, by Chicana authors Emma Pérez and Carla Trujillo. The two literary pieces offer a site for questionings the patriarchal system operating in the Mexican-American culture, the taboo regarding female sexuality and the violence against women and children. Even though the novels employ different narrative strategies, both of them are written in the first-person. Gulf Dreams focuses on the narrative of an adult woman, retelling through fragments of memory the oppression she has suffered as a woman, Chicana and lesbian since her adolescence. In the form of a modern bildungsroman, What Night Brings addresses the experiences of a pre-teen girl and her unveiling of queer existence. Lesbian desire, present in both novels, is the element that impels their narrators to question and subvert the expected social role of women. Based primarily on Chicana and feminist criticism, this analysis explores the existing oppressions, machismo and silencing of women in the selected novels. Violence against women, whether physical or psychological, surpasses these literary pieces through cases of harassment, rape and domestic violence, common in the Chicano community, but certainly not limited to it