Abstract
Ariana E Vigil’s book Public Negotiations: Gender and Journalism in Contemporary US Latina/o Literature explores the relationship between literature and journalism by focusing on literary texts that are about journalists/journalism. While drawing on feminist media studies and Latina/o media studies, her approach is predominantly based on close reading of the texts in line with the literary studies’ tradition. The author argues that the attention to production, dissemination, and reception throughout the book is in dialogue with how these facets of Latina/o media are taken up in Latina/o media scholarship, while the privileging of literary analysis also allows us to consider how the realm of the creative and imaginative offer news possibilities for reflecting and shaping the Latina/o media landscape. (p. 13)
One of the main arguments she puts forward in the book is that ‘Latina/o texts have used the figure of the Latina/o journalist to invoke, contest, and problematize the Latina/o public sphere’ (p. 18). The book is split into two main parts. Part I, ‘Domestic Negotiations’, focuses on Chicana/o texts in California in the period from the early 1970s until the early 1990s. It consists of three chapters – Introduction and two substantive chapters. The first substantive chapter analyses Oscar Zeta Acosta’s The Revolt of the Cockroach People and Lucha Corpi’s Eulogy for a Brown Angel – both related to the murder of journalist Ruben Salazar and the 1970 Chicano Moratorium, while the second one focuses on Cherrie Moraga’s Heroes and Saints portraying the struggle against the pesticide poisoning in California’s Central Valley. Part II, ‘Transnational Negotiations’, then looks at Latina/o texts beyond the United States. It comprises two substantive chapters and Conclusion. The substantive chapters examine Francisco Goldman’s The Long Night of White Chickens written in response to the Guatemalan Civil War and the US intervention as well as Graciela Limon’s Erased Faces and Ana Menendez’s The Last War. The book will definitely be of interest to scholars interested in the intersections between journalism, literature and feminist studies, even those who do not specifically focus on Latin American issues in their work.