Quinn-Sánchez, Kathryn

Dr. Kathryn Quinn-Sánchez is an Assistant Professor at Georgian Court University in Lakewood, New Jersey, where she teaches a variety of courses on Latin American Literature, Spanish Language, and Latin American Culture. She received her M.A. from Middlebury College through their graduate program in Madrid, Spain. Dr. Quinn-Sánchez earned her Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Literary and Political History of Post-Revolutionary Mexico

2006 0-7734-5887-5
This study demonstrates how the original, exclusive portrayals of the “ideal” nation and its “ideal” citizens are carried into the Post-Revolutionary era, whereby, authors such as Rosario Castellanos, Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Samuel Ramos, Rodolfo Usigli, and Xavier Villaurrutia view their society as a system that has segregated rather than unified individuals into one nation. Hence, the State’s legitimacy and authority to imagine what is considered “the ideal” is questioned explicitly, as is the authenticity of its foundational imaginings. The book responds directly to Doris Sommer’s Foundational Fictions (1991). While Sommer’s premise equates the writing of the romantic union of lovers from different backgrounds to the eventual success of the nation, this work exploits and expands the interdependent relationships between ideology, literature and the Mexican State that essentially guaranteed the failure of successful nation building. Moreover, this text exposes this failure through analyzing how twentieth-century Mexican authors and their works reject and contest the positivist legacy of the original foundational fictions.