Literature--Criticism and interpretation

I examine Donna Barba Higuera’s The Last Cuentista to not only continue discourse on Latinx SF, but also extend it to Latinx Children’s SF. Barba Higuera highlights themes of colonialism and cultural erasure found within SF novels before disrupting them with a Latinx protagonist. She blends Anglo-Western tropes and themes with Latinx folklore and technology, creating a new canon that sees and treats both as important. Her work also allows for a story centered on providing hope in the face of trauma and erasure. I argue Barba Higuera disrupts the themes of racism and erasure in science-fiction and dystopian CYA and instead incorporates Latinx traditions of oral storytelling and Trickster figures with more common tropes found in CYA literature to ground readers in a potential world that is as culturally diverse as our present one.

This thesis examines the figure of the labyrinth in the contemporary novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, and in relation to works by Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco. House of Leaves presents not only labyrinths with which its characters interact, but a seemingly material, textual labyrinth its readers are forced to navigate. This thesis argues that what are important about these features are that they serve to both extend the broader theoretical concerns of the book, and to (paradoxically) invest the reader more deeply in "the story" and to greater emotional effect.