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US Central American relational identity formation in Maya Chinchilla’s and Leticia Hernández-Linares’s poetics

Formación de la identidad relacional centroamericana en los EE.UU. en la poética de Maya Chinchilla y Leticia Hernández-Linares

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Abstract

Taking up interconnected concerns about the hierarchies that exist within Latinidad and what I call Latina/o/x relational identity formation, this article focuses on the complexity of US Central American identity formation through an analysis of Maya Chinchilla’s and Leticia Hernández-Linares’s representation of US Central Americanness as it intersects with Chicana/o/x cultural influences. My discussion focuses on the poems “Homegirl” from Chinchilla’s poetry collection The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética (2014) and “Cars That Go Boom” from Hernández-Linares's collection Razor Edges of My Tongue (2002). Through a relational and polycultural framing and in conversation with US Central American studies and cultural identity scholars, my analysis centers the agency and dynamism that characterizes US Central American relational identity formation, while simultaneously grappling with the unequal power dynamics that exist within Latinidad through an intersectional lens that centers questions of race, gender, sexuality, nation, and language.

Resumen

Partiendo de las preocupaciones interconectadas sobre las jerarquías presentes dentro de la latinidad y lo que llamamos la formación de la identidad relacional latina, este artículo aborda la complejidad de la formación de la identidad centroamericana en los Estados Unidos analizando la representación de Maya Chinchilla y Leticia Hernández-Linares de la centroamericanidad en los Estados Unidos según su intersección con las influencias culturales chicanas. El argumento se enfoca en los poemas “Homegirl” del poemario de Chinchilla titulado The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética (2014) y “Cars That Go Boom” del poemario de Hernández-Linares Razor Edges of My Tongue (2002). Por medio de un marco relacional y policultural y en conversación con académicos de estudios centroamericanos en los Estados Unidos y de identidad cultural, nuestro análisis se centra en la acción y el dinamismo que caracteriza a la formación de la identidad relacional centroamericana en los Estados Unidos y aborda la dinámica de poder desigual que existe dentro de la latinidad usando un lente interseccional enfocado en cuestiones de raza, género, sexualidad, nación e idioma.

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Notes

  1. Examples include the erasure of Afro-Latinas/os/xs, Indigenous people from Latin America who are often read through a Latina/o/x lens once they are in the U.S., and those who fall outside the Latina/o/x Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban tripartite (see for instance: Falconi et al. 2007; García-Peña 2016; Blackwell et al. 2017).

  2. I use the terms “Latina/o/x” and “Chicana/o/x” to acknowledge and make room for the complexities of naming practices and the political significance of the identity categories people use to self-identify. While the use of the “x” in Latinx and Chicanx disrupts the gender binary that is upheld by the “a/o” configuration, it also has the potential to obscure the gendered hierarchies that exist within Latina/o/x and Chicana/o/x social and interpersonal relations. We need to name Latinas and Chicanas, Latinos and Chicanos, and Latinxs and Chicanxs, in part, to make visible the distinct ways that those who occupy these positionalities experience the world. For instance, many Chicano trans men or Latina trans women are still fighting to be recognized as men or women and in these cases the use of the “o” or the “a” has critical political and life-affirming significance. Another example of why it is important to recognize these various gendered positionalities is the importance of the “a” for Latina and Chicana feminists who are struggling for gender and racial justice from marginalized positionalities as women of Latin American descent or as women of color. Thus, while Latinx and Chicanx make vital linguistic interventions (and might be less clunky or redundant), the slash, the “a,” and the “o” continue to do critical work.

  3. See Cárdenas (2018) chapters 1 and 2 on the racial politics of these isthmian imaginaries.

  4. Later that same year Arturo Arias further theorized Chinchilla’s neologism and introduced the formulation American Central American (Arias 1999).

  5. Rosa Linda Fregoso, Stacy Macías, and Jillian Hernandez have each noted that the West Coast chola aesthetic is rooted in Mexican American and Chicana/o/x oppositional practices that reject dominant standards of respectability. Cha-Cha cholas are excessive and unruly in their hyperfeminine working-class self-styling (Herrera 2020), a style that is often associated with Latina urban style (Fregoso 1995; Hernandez 2020; Macías 2016). However, as Cristina Herrera notes we should be critical of the “seemingly natural alignment of cholas/homegirl with urban identity” that erase other geographies where this self-styling also exists, such as rural areas (Herrera 2020).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Leticia Hernández-Linares and Maya Chinchilla for sharing their creative writing with the world. Without the work of creative writers, literary criticism would not be possible. I also thank audiences at the 2019 American Studies Association Conference and the 4th Biennial US Latina/o Literary Theory and Criticism Conference at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, especially Randy Ontiveros, who provided excellent feedback on an earlier version of this essay. Dennis López and Gretel Vera Rosas also offered important responses as I was developing this research. Additionally, the Latino Studies editorial team and two anonymous reviewers provided critical evaluations that helped strengthen many areas of this art.

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    Araceli Esparza

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Esparza, A. US Central American relational identity formation in Maya Chinchilla’s and Leticia Hernández-Linares’s poetics. Lat Stud (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-024-00447-5

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