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CATRIONA RUEDA ESQUIBEL'S WITH HER MACHETE IN HER HAND: READIN6 CHICANA LESBIANS, AUSTIN, UNIVERSITY OE TEXAS PRESS, 2006
The mystery of who and what was rubbed out by the policing of both Chicano and, by extension, U.S. literary and theoretical production, has been intrepidly pursued by Catriona Rueda Esquibel's scholarly work With Her Machete in Her Hand: Reading Chicana Lesbians. In this remarkably original study, Esquibel investigates the crime scene at the site of literary canon building by posing as a literary "girl dick" (pun intended) hot on the genealogical trail of lesbian desire in Chicana and Chicano letters. After reading Esquibel's introduction, readers and critics will want to know how Esquibel will prove her assertion "that queer Chicana art and fiction is important not only for what is says about queer Chicanas but also for what it says about Chicana/o culture, about American society" (xvi) and "Chicana lesbians are central to understanding Chicana/o communities, theories, and feminisms" (3). Ultimately, Esquivel's analysis of Chicano and Chicana literary and visual culture demonstrates that lesbian desire is nothing new to Chicano literature-there it was always " already there." Rather, it is the policing of narratives by particular scholars that relegates "newcomer" status to writing affiliated with Chicana lesbian desire. Notably, in her chronology across genre (literary, digital, and visual arts), Esquibel does not fall into the trap of Grafting origin stories and, like the writers she contemplates, approaches the issue of literary genealogy in inventive ways. For what makes Esquivel's take unique and important is that her interest is "not in policing the boundaries of who writes Chicana lesbian fictions and what makes a text belong in this grouping but rather in beginning the discussion of what Chicana lesbian fiction accomplishes" (2). Needless to say, this statement opens the field of Chicano literary criticism in fresh and necessary ways.
In addition to its important genealogical intervention, what makes this book a joy to read is Esquibel's obvious love of the word, her facility with double entendras and double reading. This facility is introduced...