Although ethnography is defined many times as “the study of the Other,†in Norma E. Cantú it becomes the study of the subjective self and the others who relationally define the self.
Author Norma E. Cantú’s writing describes a border culture not only because it speaks Spanish, is bilingual and bicultural, and is mostly located in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, the U.S. and México, but also because it depicts a bicognitive reality. Sara GarcÃa has pointed out that Cantú writes about “the border from within the border,†what Mary Louise Pratt calls “the contact zone.†In her work, Norma E. Cantú depicts the internal, moral, and linguistic borders that Chican@s cross continually throughout their lives in various and diverse manners.
With its mixture of writing and orality, past and present, all mediated by memory, CanÃcula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, Cantú’s first groundbreaking novel, could also be read as testimonial literature if defined by Margaret Randall as “the possibility to reconstruct the truth.† We invite submissions on Norma E. Cantú’s oeuvre and vision, including but not limited to her criticism, folklore, theory, and literature, as well as her newspaper articles. We welcome academic papers about CanÃcula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera and all other works authored by Norma Elia Cantú, including poetry, short stories, opinion pieces, etcetera.