Border Fictions: Nationalism and Decolonial Aesthetics in US-Mexico Migration Literature

Abstract

Submitted to the Undergraduate Library Research Award scholarship competition: (2025). 35 p.This essay explores the literary representations of national identity, national borders, and transnational Latinx migrants in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive (2019) and Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World (2015). Both novels interrogate the myth of American exceptionalism and the common preconceptions Americans have toward Latinx migrants: Luiselli’s novel portrays a national identity crisis following the narrator’s confrontation with the reality of the ongoing child refugee crisis, while Herrera’s novel assumes the transnational migrant’s perspective to dissect the illogical meanings attributed to the symbols and practices that support American nationalism. This project builds from Glenda R. Carpio’s formulation of “migrant aesthetics” in contemporary migration literature, from which I consider literary features that expose the fragile yet highly consequential assumptions that compose American national identity. Across the various sections of the essay, I argue that migration fiction constructively questions the nationalist ideologies that produce physical and intangible violence against Latinx migrants