Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Jul 2023)
Drift Searching in Three Postmodern Mexican Novels: ‘Nadie me verá llorar’ by Cristina Rivera Garza, ‘Tela de sevoya’ by Myriam Moscona, and ‘El animal sobre la piedra’ by Daniela Tarazona
Abstract
Literature allows readers to approach reality through fiction, reflecting and containing individual and collective human experiences. Postmodernity is a constantly changing and self-reflective phenomenon, and this article analyzes postmodern characteristics in three Mexican novels written by Mexican women between 1999 and 2012. Postmodernity is characterized by the decentralization of power, disbelief in metanarratives, and the reaffirmation of the particular, amongst other features. Latin American postmodernist narrative includes elements such as autofiction, fragmentation, intertextuality, and the representation of marginal characters. This article focuses on the novels Nadie me verá llorar by Cristina Rivera Garza, El animal sobre la piedra by Daniela Tarazona, and Tela de sevoya by Myriam Moscona, which address the theme of travel together with some of the beforementioned characteristics. The journeys in these three novels share aspects such as the protagonists' identity crisis, a constant ambiguity as both theme and narrative strategies, and the transgression of seemingly opposing boundaries, as well as culminating in physical, emotional, and personal isolation in a sort of suspended drift of relationships and connection to grand metanarratives. These elements reflect the postmodernist nature of literature, and the protagonists' continuous search represents their desire to redefine their own identity categories and their relationship with alterity
