Structural inequity makes women, racial/ethnic minorities, queer people, and people in poverty particularly susceptible to violence in the United States. Because of the failure of state-funded anti-violence models to combat the oppressive structures that facilitate abuse of women specifically, it is more critical than ever that activist scholars help understand and meet the needs of survivors by continuing to encourage radical art forms as pathways to education and awareness. While Chicana literature has garnered more critical attention in the past two decades, nevertheless, there has not been a comprehensive study of how gender violence is represented within it. My dissertation brings these issues to the forefront of academia and places Mexican American women as central to the development of self-determining communities in the United States. It is a contribution to the study of violence against women, but most specifically Chicanas.

In my study, I propose a theory of "transformative narrativity," a type of radical storytelling that builds bridges between survivors, activists, literature and social movements. Through interdisciplinary methods, I also explore what I denominate as "survival narratives" by examining rape discourse in several politically charged texts, The House on Mango Street (1984) by Sandra Cisneros, So Far From God (1992) by Ana Castillo, and Black Widow's Wardrobe (1999) by Lucha Corpi. Each describes a process of politicization that occurs for survivors of sexual violence when they understand the social conditions under which they have been victimized and choose to resist. In these case studies, by applying the lens of woman of color feminist theory to the hermeneutics of cultural production, I also engage with a formal textual analysis based on Chicana literary criticism that identifies social protest literature as a subversive act of resistance against structural oppression.

My ultimate aim is to identify potential areas in Chicana narratives that can spark collective struggle, and inspire alternative forms of anti-violence action. Radical storytelling is resistance through representation, art as activism, and writing as revolution.