Explores how US Mexicana and Chicana authors and artists across different historical periods and regions use domestic space to actively claim their own histories. Through "negotiation” and "self-fashioning”, Marci R. McMahon demonstrates how the sites of domesticity are used to engage the many political and recurring debates about race, gender, and immigration affecting Mexicanas and Chicanas.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note on Terminology

Introduction

Part I. Domestic Power
1. The Chili Queens of San Antonio: Challenging Domestication through Street Vending and Fashion
2. Claiming Domestic Space in the US-Mexico Borderlands: Jovita González and Eve Raleigh's Caballero and Cleofas Jaramillo's Romance of a Little Village Girl
3. Domestic Power across Borders: Fabiola Cabeza de Baca's Home Economics Work in New Mexico and Mexico

Part II. Domesticana
4. Postnationalist and Domesticana Strategies: Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street and Carmen Lomas Garza's Familias
5. Patssi Valdez's "A Room of One's Own": Self-Fashioning, Glamour, and Domesticity in the Museum and Hollywood
6. Redirecting Chicana/Latina Representation: Diane Rodríguez's Performance and Staging of the Domestic

Epilogue: Denaturalizing the Domestic

Notes
References
Index

MARCI R. McMAHON is an assistant professor in the English department at the University of Texas, Pan American.