A "Wild Zone" of Her Own: Locating the Chicana Experience in the Theatre Works of Josefina López

Abstract

The present study focuses on the different psychological spaces that Chicana women must occupy in order to develop an oppositional consciousness and discourse through an analysis of three plays by Josefina López: Boyle Heights (2005), Detained in the Desert (2010), and Hungry Woman (2013). The “Wild Zone” theory as posited by Cordelia Candelaria in “The ‘Wild Zone’ Thesis as Gloss in Chicana Literary Study” serves as the primary theoretical lens due to its usefulness in an intersectional analysis of Chicana experience and identity, both in the Southwestern United States and abroad, by theorizing the separate cultural and political spaces, or zones, that women inhabit in society.