Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Masculinity, Violence and Urban Space in the New Puerto Rican Noir

Mon, May 30, 4:15 to 5:45pm, TBA

Abstract

This paper is part of a larger project that analyzes the intersection of masculinity, violence and the city in a set of novels that compose what I see as a new genre of Puerto Rican noir literature. I argue that the texts that I study – Marta Aponte Alsina’s novella Fúgate and the novel Sobre mi cadaver, Max Chárriez’s Ojos como de hombre, and Manolo Núñez Negrón’s Barrachina, among others – are part of a growing genre of Puerto Rican literature that challenges the construction of masculinity, its relationship to urban violence and to the Puerto Rican nation in detective fiction. Instead of presenting traditionally masculine detectives who uncover the truth in order to restore justice, the protagonists of these texts struggle with their own violent histories – the haunting memory of abuse, the history of alcoholism and mental illness – to propose a more complex look at the fallibility of masculinity, at the uncertainty of truth and at the fragility of justice. By destabilizing the traditional image of masculinity, the texts also question the cultural nationalist discourse of la gran familia puertorriqueña, criticizing the patriarchal principles that define it, and reconfiguring the concept of the nation.

Author