{"id":19529,"date":"2012-01-04T03:53:11","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T03:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=19529"},"modified":"2012-01-04T03:53:11","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T03:53:11","slug":"white-slaves-and-the-arrogant-mestiza-reconfiguring-whiteness-in-the-squatter-and-the-don-and-ramona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=19529","title":{"rendered":"“White Slaves” and the “Arrogant Mestiza”: Reconfiguring Whiteness in The Squatter and the Don and Ramona"},"content":{"rendered":"

“White Slaves” and the “Arrogant Mestiza”: Reconfiguring Whiteness in The Squatter and the Don and Ramona<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

American Literature<\/a>
\nVolume 69, Number 4<\/a> (December, 1997)
\npages 813-839<\/p>\n

David Luis-Brown<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and English
\nClaremont Graduate University, Claremont, California<\/em><\/p>\n

In Helen Hunt Jackson’s<\/a> Ramona<\/a><\/em> (1884) and The Squatter and the Don<\/a><\/em> (1885) by Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton<\/a> are indisputably political novels, representing conflicts over land, class position, and racial status in California in the 1870s. These novels represent Anglos, Californios, and Indians as struggling for social position following the U.S. annexation of one-half of Mexico as a result of the Mexican War of 1846-1848<\/a>. However, although most critics view these texts as political, their insufficient historicization of narrative form has led them to misconstrue as antagonistic the relationship between form and reform in these novels. Despite the canon-expanding feminist criticism of Lauren Berlant<\/a>, Ann Douglas, Jane Tompkins, and others, which has allowed us to read as politically engaged the previously marginalized genres of melodrama and romance, Michael Dorris<\/a> associates melodrama in Ramona<\/em> with improbable events, simplistic characterization, and chaste love; Rosaura S\u00e1nchez and Beatrice Pita split Squatter<\/em> into “two tracks, one historical and one romantic.” S\u00e1nchez and Pita view the romance as a love story inadequate to Squatter’s<\/em> historical content\u2014conflicts over racial caste. According to the logic of such constricting definitions of romance, a politically engaged, protofeminist nineteenth-century sentimental text would be a contradiction in terms, a clearly untenable conclusion given recent feminist scholarship.<\/p>\n

Feminist scholarship on sentimentalism has allowed us to grasp the point of view expressed by Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed<\/a>, an early admirer of Ramona<\/em>. In the prologue to his 1888 translation of Ramona<\/em>, Mart\u00ed argues that Ramona’s<\/em> sentimental qualities constitute its political strength…<\/p>\n

Purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“White Slaves” and the “Arrogant Mestiza”: Reconfiguring Whiteness in The Squatter and the Don and Ramona American Literature Volume 69, Number 4 (December, 1997) pages 813-839 David Luis-Brown, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and English Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California In Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona (1884) and The Squatter and the Don (1885) by Maria […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,25],"tags":[8655,9054],"class_list":["post-19529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-women","tag-american-literature","tag-david-luis-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}