Coming apart and coming together: The effects of gender, intergenerational trauma, and identity on mental health in Erika L. Sánchez’s I am not your perfect Mexican daughter

Abstract

Overall, my portfolio focuses on how minorities are represented in literature and, in the case of one project, how minorities are represented in images. I primarily focus on racialized women and how their societies see them. For example, in Chapter IV I argue the role of women as warriors and in charge of transferring the memories of their Choctaw community to their people in LeAnne Howe’s Shell Shaker, and I also include instances of racialized immigrant bodies in the first draft of my now revised paper based on Erika L. Sánchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter found in Chapter V of my thesis portfolio. My work in minority representation extends further than women and, as a result, my portfolio demonstrates another specific focus on race and ethnic identities to show how these factors limit people’s roles in society and how other Eurocentric communities might see them. Along with that, my portfolio also represents other minority groups by including work that highlights queer authors like Gertrude Stein and hidden disabilities like that of the main character, Julia, which serves as a major focus of my lead paper.