Introduction: Cicatrix Poetics: Chicana Literary Trauma Studies

Chicana literature often represents gender violence while simultaneously presenting strategies of survival in response. In this book, I aim to contribute to a broader conversation concerning the intersections between Chicana literature and decolonial trauma theory, which questions the colonial matrix of power and the universality of Western knowledge. I argue that Chicana survival narratives arise out of colonial wounds and form scars that both mark and protect the violated body and propose a “cicatrix poetics” that gestures toward narrative or storytelling as a means of healing from violence and trauma. I further contend that the cicatrix fashioned through artistic expression is a necessary component for our communities—not just to survive, but to thrive. I offer several case studies that examine transformative narrativity and by theorizing the texts as survival narratives, social protest works that bring attention to violence and erasure, I explore how literature can be an effective catalyst for social change and personal transformation, and an orientation towards freedom.