Doom Patterns

Maia Gil'AdI is Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of Latinx Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Acknowledgments and Agradecimientos ix Introduction. The Reading Protocols of Latinx Speculative Fictions 1 1. Doom Patterning the Postcolony and the New Caribbean Mythology 33 2. Sweet Apocalypse: Sugar and Monstrosity at the End of the World 60 3. Approximation, Horror, and the Grotesque on the US-Mexico Border 90 4. Rekonkista: Brownface, Time Travel, and Cyberfascism in "Greater Mexico" 121 5. Her Body, Our Horror: Self-Abnegation; or, On Silence, Refusal, and Becoming the Un/Self 150 Coda. Thinking from the Hole: Latinidad on the Edge 178 Notes 195 Bibliography 225 Index 253

"Maia Gil'AdI approaches Latinx speculative fiction as a paradigm to read through Latinx studies, posing sharp questions that warrant serious consideration. By putting works that normally would not be placed in conversation with each other, such as Colson Whitehead's Zone One and Cristina GarcIa's Dreaming in Cuban, Gil'AdI not only sheds new light on these works; she generates a new conversation altogether. Her innovative interventions make Doom Patterns a bold, generative, and liberating move for Latinx studies." - Catherine S. Ramirez, author of (Assimilation: An Alternative History) "Maia Gil'AdI troubles the bounds of Latinx literature. Across sumptuous readings of speculative fiction, she reveals 'doom patterns' of recurrent violence not only in literature but as the cohering logic of a hemispheric latinidad. In so doing, she problematizes concepts and practices of canonicity, reframes theorizations of the borderlands, and challenges conventions for taxonomies of Latinx literature. Doom Patterns is essential reading for scholars of Latinx literature, multiethnic literature, English, and Latinx studies and American studies more broadly." - Leticia Alvarado, author of (Abject Performances: Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production)