Publications
Publication details [#44283]
Lanslots, Inge and An Van Hecke. 2016. Building stories on The Brick People: mapping Alejandro Morales’s otherness in documentary and fiction. The Journal of Internationalization and Localization 3 (2) : 182–195.
Publication type
Article in jnl/bk
Publication language
English
Keywords
Person as a subject
Title as subject
Journal DOI
10.1075/jial
Abstract
The focus of this study is an analysis of the novel The Brick People published by the Chicano author Morales in 1988 and its homonymous documentary film from 2012. In the official historiography, this part of Mexican migration in California has been ignored. This study will reveal how the novel and the documentary deal with this gap or interstice in North-American history and how they reflect the cultural divide in Southern California. The paper emphasizes how both the novelist and the documentary makers present the topics of integration, of preservation or construction of the Mexican cultural identity and of cross-cultural dialogue to an English speaking audience. The depiction of this target locale presents itself as a borderland that clusters a rich mix of cultural, historical, and (non) urban landscapes (Gersdorf 2009, 309). This ancient collective memory appears serendipitously as sudden sites or potential links of human action collected in one or more of the previous structures of consciousness and inspire individuals to perform and produce in unique and extraordinary ways (Morales 2012, 111).
Source : Based on abstract in journal