Open Collections

Abstract

This thesis examines contemporary Mexican women’s anthologies that confront the escalating crisis of patriarchal and state violence, arguing that the anthology form functions as a vital mode of women’s collective resistance. In this project, I focus on three distinct works—¡Basta! Cien mujeres contra la violencia de género (2014), Raíz y flor (2023), and Ya no somos las mismas y aquí sigue la guerra (2020)—in order to examine how women writers are utilizing different literary genres—microfiction, poetry, and journalistic essay—to articulate experiences of violence, but also shared visions of a better future. Across these anthologies, women’s bodies emerge as both targets of gendered harm and generative territories of political agency. Bringing feminist theories of corporeality and gendered violence into dialogue with the literary strategies of each text, the project demonstrates the ways that authors are reconfiguring the female body as a site of not only memories of violence but of resistance to that violence. In each chapter I examine one anthology and approach the different themes prominent in each, such as spatiality, ecological symbolism and forms of care, to consider how they are utilized to critique contemporary forms of men’s violence in Mexico. I draw from theories of feminist geographers, ecofeminist theory and conceptual frameworks around care and embodied solidarity to demonstrate that female writers, through the anthology form, are producing feminist knowledge, creating alliances, and, ultimately, strengthening collective responses to male violence against women and feminicidio in Mexico.