Garcia Presents at MLA
Sarai Garcia, PhD candidate in Hispanic Language & Literatures, presented at this year’s MLA conference. Her paper, “Anita Brenner, Jean Charlot, and Luz Jimenez: A transnational endeavor to translate the Mexican indigenous imaginary into US children’s literature” was part of the session “Political Childhoods, Political Children.” The panel brought together archival research and historical narratives to consider what it means to be a political child and a politicized child across cultural, racial, and geographical contexts. Garcia’s paper focused on the collaboration of Anita Brenner, Jean Charlot, and Luz Jimenez in writing children’s books as a project to bring an edifying image of Mexico’s peasant childhood, while neglecting a very politicized peasant constituency. Her presentation also takes into consideration the changes that the concept of childhood underwent after the Cardenista era (1934-1940) and how the process of cultural production in a capitalist era modifies the ethical and aesthetic concerns of the time.
As said in her abstract: “Brenner’s use of irony as a critique to modernity, and her crafting of a conscious and irreverent narrative voice for her characters explore a double conundrum: is modernity finally taking to the next level the ideal of the intellectual child in literature or is it that this aesthetic appearance only arises suspicion and reflects the gimmick of the capitalist mode of production in the arts and culture of the twentieth century through children’s literature?”