Latina Performance

"Arrizón's (Arrizon's) important book revolves around the complex issues of identity formation and power relations for US women performers of Latin American descent. Latinas use writing and performance to address gender and sexuality within an ever—changing framework of their lives and history, redefining Latina identity and subjectivity. The Chicana/o theatrical tradition since the 1960s owes a debt to the popular Spanish—language vaudeville forms performed by Beatriz Escalona (La Chata Noloesca), the work of Josefina Niggli in community theater, and other performers who recognized the common core of their community as based on a consciousness of historical collectivity and pluralistic sensitivities. The Latina experience is broad and complex, and the term traversing in the title indicates a movement that induces the subject into an uncertain position, with transitions in identity and space. In Cross—Border Subjectivity and the Dramatic Text, Arrizón (Arrizon) addresses geopolitics and cultural survival in work by Milcha Sanchez—Scott, Dolores Prida, and Josefina Lopez; Self—Representation: Race, Ethnicity, and Queer Identity looks at the work of performance artists Monica Palacios and Alina Troyano/Carmelita Tropicana. Valuable for anyone interested in theater history and criticism, cultural studies, gender studies, and ethnic studies with attention to Mexican American, Chicana/o, and Latina/o studies. Upper—division undergraduates through professionals."—E. C. Ramirez, St. Philip's College, Choice, February 2002