Contributions by Kathleen Alcala, Sarah Amira de la Garza, Sarah De Los Santos Upton, Moises Gonzales, Luisa Fernanda Grijalva-Maza, Leandra H. Hernandez, Spencer R. Herrera, Brenda Selena Lara, Susana Loza, Juan Pacheco Marcial, Amanda R. Martinez, Diana Isabel Martinez, Diego Medina, Cathryn J. Merla-Watson, Arturo "Velaz" Munoz, Eric Murillo, Saul Ramirez, Roxanna Ivonne Sanchez-Avila, ire'ne lara silva, Lizzeth Tecuatl Cuaxiloa, and Bianca Tonantzin Zamora Monsters and Saints: LatIndigenous Landscapes and Spectral Storytelling is a collection of stories, poetry, art, and essays divining the contemporary intersection of Latinx and Indigenous cultures from the American Southwest, Mexico, and Central and South America. To give voice to this complicated identity, this volume investigates how cultures of ghost storytelling foreground a sense of belonging and home in people from LatIndigenous landscapes. Monsters and Saints reflects intersectional and intergenerational understandings of lived experiences, bodies, and traumas as narrated through embodied hauntings. Contributions to this anthology represent a commitment to thoughtful inquiry into the ways storytelling assigns meaning through labels like monster, saint, and ghost, particularly as these unfold in the context of global migration. For many marginalized and displaced peoples, a sense of belonging is always haunted through historical exclusion from an original homespace. This exclusion further manifests as limited bodily autonomy. By locating the concept of "home" as beyond physical constructs, the volume argues that spectral stories and storytelling practices of LatIndigeneity (re)configure affective states and spaces of being, becoming, migrating, displacing, and belonging.
Shantel Martinez is a practitioner-scholar who centers place-based storytelling practices to examine cycles of intergenerational trauma and survival in both familial and educational spaces. Kelly Medina-Lopez is a Piro-Manso-Tiwa Border-Indigenous scholar whose work focuses on histories, rhetorics, and storytelling practices of the US Southwest, New Mexico, and specifically Paso del Norte.
Acknowledgments Introduction: Collecting Our Bones Shantel Martinez and Kelly Medina-Lopez Part I. Ghosts in the Real: Historiography in Our Stories that Becomes Research Chapter 1. La Llorona: A LatIndingenous Specter of Trauma, Motherhood, and Contemporary Racial Violence Sarah De Los Santos Upton and Leandra Hinojosa Hernandez Chapter 2. Legacies of Land, Cultural Clashes, and Spiritual Stirrings: A Testimonio of New Mexican Ghost Stories Amanda R. Martinez Chapter 3. Dueling Border-Ghosts: Exploring the Equator as a Space of Spirituality and Resistance Diana Isabel Martinez Chapter 4. Closing the Circle Eric Murillo Chapter 5. Ciguanabas, Refugees, and Other Hauntings: Three Salvadoran Women's Epistemic Hauntings as Resistance against Heteropatriarchy Brenda Selena Lara Chapter 6. "Entre la Santa y la Muerte": Liminality and Empowerment in Mexico's Santa Muerte Luisa Fernanda Grijalva-Maza Chapter 7. La CoyotaPerejundia Moises Gonzales Chapter 8. Iconografia Prohibida/Forbidden Iconography Lizzeth Tecuatl Cuaxiloa Chapter 9. Making a Living Saul Ramirez Part II. Hazme Caso: Memoir, Poetry, and Stories Chapter 10. Curse of the Zamora Girls: Unveiling Familial Ghost Stories for Survival Bianca Tonantzin Zamora Chapter 11. And He Whispered, "Yolanda, Yolanda" Spencer R. Herrera Chapter 12. Mi Abuelita y Los Rosarios Arturo "Velaz" Munoz Chapter 13. Los Aullidos de las Madres Sarah Amira de la Garza Chapter 14. my baby wanted an el camino, that's real Diego Medina Chapter 15. Cry Baby Kathleen Alcala Chapter 16. Becoming Indigenous Again: Returning Home and Making the Ghosts Visible Juan Pacheco Marcial Chapter 17. cortando las nubes,or, death came on horses ire'ne lara silva Chapter 18. Thru the Veil and 32.2480 degrees N, 112.9161 degrees W (Sonoran Desert) Roxanna Ivonne Sanchez-Avila Part III. Bringing the Borderlands Home: Public Discourses and Theories of the Flesh Chapter 19. Hauntology of the Oppressed: The MeXicana Gothic and Spectral Geographies in Sandra Cisneros's "Woman Hollering Creek" Cathryn J. Merla-Watson Chapter 20. Haunted by Settler Nostalgia: (Lat)Indigenous Specters, White Vampires, and the Historical Amnesia of Twilight Susana Loza About the Contributors Index
This truly innovative book amasses creative and research-based writing that illustrates a connection between historical indigenous communities and contemporary Chicanx identified peoples." - Rachel Gonzalez-Martin, author of Quinceanera Style: Social Belonging and Latinx Consumer Identities
