Abstract
This article explores how Gloria Anzaldúa’s picture books provide additional theoretical frames that complement her existing scholarship. While much has been said about her contributions to the fields of Latinx studies, little has been said about how her theories extend to children or children’s literature. Nevertheless, reading the picture books as theory reveals a process of transformation wherein characters must first transform themselves in order to effect change through activism. The narrative across Anzaldúa’s picture books illuminates and illustrates this concept by establishing how Prietita, the protagonist of both books, first comes into her own agency and then is able to ameliorate her circumstances. But this process is not just embodied by Prietita, but can instead be seen as a trend in other texts—hence how these picture books equally function as a theoretical frame for reading processes of transformation and resistance.
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Notes
Existing analyses of Anzaldúa’s children’s literature include Tiffany Ana López and Phillip Serrato’s (2011) “A New Mestiza Primer: Borderlands Philosophy in the Children’s Books of Gloria Anzaldúa,” Isabel Millán’s (2015) “Contested Children’s Literature: Que(e)ries into Chicana and Central American Autofantasías,” Jesús A. Montaño’s (2009) “Transnationalism in the Works of Francisco Jiménez, Pam Muñoz Ryan (2000), and Gloria Anzaldúa,” Tey Diana Rebolledo’s (2006) “Prietita y el Otro Lado: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Literature for Children,” and Edith M. Vásquez’s (2005) “La Gloriosa Travesura de la Musa Que Cruza/The Misbehaving Glory(a) of the Border-Crossing Muse: Transgression in Anzaldúa’s Children’s Stories,” but these articles mostly focus on analyses of Anzaldúa’s works as works of literature, not theory.
There are, in fact, reports of the murder of trespassers on the King Ranch land. In 1936, a LIFE magazine article, “The Battle of the Fence” (1936), claimed Luther and Frank Blanton, a father and son pair, trespassed on the King Ranch land to go duck hunting. After her husband and son climbed through a fence, Luther Blanton’s wife reported hearing gunshots. When neither father nor son returned from their hunt, and with the knowledge of shots fired, Mrs. Blanton raised an alarm with her neighbors. The magazine claims tensions between the King Ranch owners, the Klebergs, and Blanton and her neighbors instigated a militarized presence of Texas Rangers at the Ranch. Despite the presence of law enforcement, the Blanton men’s bodies were never recovered and no charges were pressed against any possible murderers on the King Ranch land.
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers whose insights on this article were invaluable, as well as the editors for Children’s Literature in Education, particularly Rhonda Brock-Servais, whose feedback helped form this article. Additional thanks to Laura Jiménez, Kristin McIllhagga, and Sally Minyad for helping me workshop this project in its early stages.
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Rhodes, C. Processes of Transformation: Theorizing Activism and Change Through Gloria Anzaldúa’s Picture Books. Child Lit Educ 52, 464–477 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-020-09429-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-020-09429-2