Open Collections

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the work of Mayra Santos-Febres, one of the most prominent contemporary Puerto Rican scholars and authors of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. At the beginning of her career, she published the two short story collections Pez de vidrio (1996) and El cuerpo correcto (1998). The publication of these collections marked a period of transition between Santos-Febres’s exploration of different literary genres, from poetry to short fiction, and later followed by the novel through which she gained critical recognition. This thesis offers a close reading of the following three short stories selected from the aforementioned collections: “Resinas para Aurelia,” “Oso Blanco,” and “La escritora.” In this project, I examine the role of abjection, intimacy, and gender in the selected narratives in works that, on my reading, become progressively more linguistically and formally experimental. Following this lexical observation, all of the chosen texts are narrated through highly figurative language, which I describe as poetic, and offer nuanced depictions of sexuality that destabilize set notions of agency and normativity. Moreover, this study centers the representation of the body and analyses the implications of corporeal tropes —primarily the imagery of hands and consistent references to bodily fluids and waste— in the stories. I draw from Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to consider how the characters’ intimate encounters with other bodies reveal new forms of relationality that challenge a strictly heteropatriarchal logic and evidence intersecting systems of oppression. This theoretical framework allows me to consider the ambiguous reactions produced by the characters’ interactions with/ as abject bodies, generating feelings of both attraction and repulsion. In addition, I attend to the disruptive aesthetics that emerge from such hand imagery, along with the introduction of formal elements —mainly poetic verses and italics— that visually intervene in the narrative’s structure. In sum, this thesis seeks to revitalize and propose a novel approach to Santos-Febres’s short fiction by foregrounding the ample use of literary devices that characterize her prose.