Trans*border literature as a response to genderized violence. A proposal for broadening the literary field in northern Mexico through the work of Sayak’s Valencia Adrift’s book and the concepts “necroescritura” and “desappropiation” in C. Rivera Garza

Abstract

The article touches down specifi cally on Adrift’s Book (2012), by Tijuana based author Sayak Valencia, as a contradictory text in between genres, that is, written from and about the border and, at the same time written as a speculum of liberation from the explicit violence of drug cartels in the vicinity of the Tijuana-San Diego (MX-USA) border. The non-gender/genre-conforming condition of Adrift’s Book is explored through what Rivera Garza calls necroescrituras (necro-writing)/desapropiaciones (de-aproppriation). The text will also explore the internal-individual condition of the border between literary categories and “biological-cultural” genderizations of masculinities/femininities. My work here aims to vindicate the existence of northern and border literatures different to those analyzed in academic studies, these other literatures that, until now have been marginalized the same way marginalized identities are. This notion will be named as the trans*fronteriza literature of northern Mexico.