Geographies of Girlhood in US Latina Writing

Andrea Fernández García is an adjunct lecturer at the University of Oviedo, Spain. She has presented papers in conferences held in Spain, Slovakia, USA, Canada and Romania. She has taught courses on English as a second language, Twentieth-century English literature and American literature and culture.

• Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Latina Girls: Questions of Identity and Representation.- Chapter 3: Space of Flows vs. Space of Places: Negotiating the Paradoxes of a Global Age in Julia Alvarez’s Return to Sender.- Chapter 4: Life on the Mexico-U.S. Border: Femininity, Transborderism, and the Reinscription of Boundaries in Norma E. Cantú’s Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera.- Chapter 5: The Barrio as a Hybrid Space: Growing Up between Nationalism and Feminism in Mary Helen Ponce’s Hoyt Street: An Autobiography.- Chapter 6: Continuities and Discontinuities between Home and School: Towards a Multi-layered Understanding of Social Spaces in Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman.- Chapter 7: Conclusions.

“Fernández-García’s book represents an invaluable approach to the field by making visible the absences in the increasingly popular field of girl’s study. … The author goes beyond essentialism, stereotypical depictions, and one-dimensional analyses by offering a solid and thorough reading of literary and scholarly texts. … Therefore, I emphasize the exceptional contribution that Geographies of Girlhood represents for approaches to intersectionality, scholarship on girlhood, and notions of US Latinx literature that ultimately redefine American studies.” (Macarena Garcia‑Avello, Latino Studies, Vol. 19, 2021)