Norma Alarcón is Professor Emerita in the Departments of Ethnic Studies, Spanish and Portuguese, and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the founder and publisher of Third Woman Press, which began as a journal and gave voice to many Latina writers. She is the author of Ninfomanía:el discurso feminista en la obra poética de Rosario Castellanos (1992) and co-editor, among others, of Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State(1999). Her writings have had an impact across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and range from Chicana feminism and Chicana literature to topics such as gender, race, feminist politics, the U.S.-Mexico border, women of color feminisms, and contemporary social justice issues. 

Norma E. Cantú, is a Professor Emerita from the Department of English, University of Texas at San Antonio, and currently serves as Murchison Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, where she teaches Creative Writing and Latinx/Chicanx Studies. Her most recently published anthologies are Chicana Portraits and the co-edited, ¡Somos Tejanas! Tejana Identity and Tejanidad, as well as her single-authored book Fiestas in Laredo.

Marisa Belausteguigoita, Professor at the School of Pedagogy in the Humanities at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and chair of the Gender Studies Center at UNAM (CIEG/UNAM). Her work focuses on the relationship between critical pedagogies, artistic and juridical practices focused on women’s access to justice, and she has been active in translating, teaching and researching the work of Chicanas and Chicana discourse and theory in México. 

Dionne Espinoza is Professor in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cal State LA. She has co-edited two award winning books: Chicana Movidas (with María Cotera and Maylei Blackwell, 2018) and Enriqueta Vasquez and the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito del Norte (with Lorena Oropeza, 2006).

Forced by Circumstance

Table of Contents

Preface: “Forced by Circumstance,” Norma Alarcón

Foreword: “Traversing Bordered Lands: The Work of Norma Alarcón,” Norma E. Cantú

Introduction: “Making Chicana Feminist Theory from Scratch: An Appreciation of Norma Alarcón's Critical Praxis,” Dionne Espinoza

PART I—HAY QUE INVENTARNOS

1. Chicana Feminist Literature: A Re-Vision Through Malintzin or, Malintzin, Putting Flesh Back on the Object

2. What Kind of Lover Have you Made me Mother?: Towards a Theory of Chicana Feminism and Cultural Identity Through Poetry

3. Making Familia from Scratch: Split Subjectivities in the Work of Helena María Viramontes and Cherríe Moraga

4. The Sardonic Powers of the Erotic in the Works of Ana Castillo

5. Traddutora, Traditora: A Paradigmatic Figure of Chicana Feminism

6. Chicana Literature: A Sexual and Racial Challenge from the Proletariat to the Patriarchy

7. Chicana Feminism: In the Tracks of “The” Native Woman

8. On Feminine Culture according to Rosario Castellanos/p>

PART II—THEORETICAL SUBJECTS

1. The Theoretical Subjects of This Bridge Called my Back and Anglo American Feminism

2. Nymphomania: The Discourse of Difference

3. Cognitive Desires: An Allegory of/for Chicana Critics

4. Tropology of Hunger: The Miseducation of Richard Rodriguez;

5. Anzaldúa’s Frontera: Inscribing Gynetics

6. Conjugating Subjects in the Age of Multiculturalism

7. Anzaldúan Textualities: A Hermeneutic of the Self and the Coyolxauqui Imperative

PART III--IMBRICATIONS/CONJUGATIONS/ MEDIATIONS

1. ...But You Don’t Look Mexican

2. Imbrications

3. Anzaldúa’s Insurrection of Subjugated Knowledges: An Interview with Norma Alarcón

4. Nepantla: Productions of Pathologies and Healing: A Conversation—Norma Alarcón, Marisa Belausteguigoitia and Romana Radlwimmer

5. Conjugations: The Insurrection of Subjugated Knowledges and Exclusionary Practices

Afterword: “Pedagogies of Confoundedness: Movidas, Paradoxes and Dilemmas of the Subjects-in-Process,” Marisa Belausteguigoitia