The Wound and the Stitch traces a history of imagery and language centered on the concept of woundedness and the stitching together of fragmented selves. Focusing particularly on California and its historical violences against Chicanx bodies, Loretta Victoria Ramirez argues that woundedness has become a ubiquitous and significant form of Chicanx self-representation, especially in late twentieth-century print media and art. Ramirez maps a genealogy of the female body from late medieval Iberian devotional sculptures to contemporary strategies of self-representation. By doing so, she shows how wounds-metaphorical, physical, historical, and linguistic-are inherited and manifested as ongoing violations of the body and othered forms of identity. Beyond simply exposing these wounds, however, Ramirez also shows us how they can be healed-or rather stitched. Drawing on Mesoamerican concepts of securing stability during lived turmoil or nepantla, Ramirez investigates how creators such as Cherrie Moraga, Renee Tajima-Pena, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and Amalia Mesa Bains repurpose the concept of woundedness to advocate for redress and offer delicate, ephemeral moments of healing. Positioning woundedness as a potent method to express Chicanx realities and transform the self from one that is wounded to one that is stitched, this book emphasizes the necessity of acknowledgment and ethical restitution for colonial legacies. It will be valued by scholars and students interested in the history of rhetorics, twentieth-century Chicanx art, and Latinx studies.
Loretta Victoria Ramirez is Assistant Professor of Latinx Rhetoric and Composition at California State University, Long Beach.
"The Wound and the Stitch is an extremely compelling and persuasive text that examines colonial trauma inflicted upon Chicanx people. Through critical and thoughtful readings of a wide variety of texts, Ramirez's book uses the idea of wounding as its primary analytic. It brings this cultural rhetoric back to where we need it most-the classroom-to consider how the wound and the stitch function in the everyday lives of Chicanx and Latinx students." -Bernadette Marie Calafell,author of Monstrosity, Performance, and Race in Contemporary Culture "A unique and innovative reading of Chicana feminist texts. Ramirez brings a deeply interdisciplinary and critical intersectional feminist reading and theoretical intervention to rhetorical studies." -Aimee Carrillo Rowe,author of Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances
