Book contents
- Latinx Literature in Transition, 1444–1886
- Latinx Literature In Transition
- Latinx Literature in Transition, 1444–1886
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Transacting
- Part II Transcending
- Chapter 5 La Llorona’s Ghosts
- Chapter 6 From Mary Rowlandson to Lola Medina
- Chapter 7 Early Latinx Formation in Inca Garcilaso
- Chapter 8 “Tragic Time”
- Part III Transgressing
- Part IV Transcreating
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Chapter 6 - From Mary Rowlandson to Lola Medina
Rethinking the Captivity Narrative Genre
from Part II - Transcending
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2025
Book contents
- Latinx Literature in Transition, 1444–1886
- Latinx Literature In Transition
- Latinx Literature in Transition, 1444–1886
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Transacting
- Part II Transcending
- Chapter 5 La Llorona’s Ghosts
- Chapter 6 From Mary Rowlandson to Lola Medina
- Chapter 7 Early Latinx Formation in Inca Garcilaso
- Chapter 8 “Tragic Time”
- Part III Transgressing
- Part IV Transcreating
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter moves beyond a captivity scholarship based almost entirely on the experiences of White or White-descent captives and their Indian captors to study an account of nineteenth-century borderland captivity in the US Southwest, where – contrary to what the plethora of Anglo captivity scholarship indicates – most captives were of Mexican and/or Indigenous descent. To do so, I read Mary Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and the Goodness of God (1682) alongside María Ruiz de Burton’s Who Would’ve Thought It? (1872). This Mexican-American historical romance novel and, I would add, fictionalization of an Indian captivity narrative, retells the history of Mexican dispossession at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War through fictional Mohave captive and emerging Mexican American elite, Lola Medina. Within a broader rethinking of the captivity narrative genre, I argue that captivity narratives helped produced proto-Latinx subjects as racially discrete individuals, even while the factual condition of nineteenth-century captivity forced individuals of Latin-American descent into ambiguous relation with other racialized communities.
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- Latinx Literature in Transition, 1444–1886 , pp. 146 - 166Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
References
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