A search for colonial histories
The conquest by Yxta Maya Murray
pp. 85-103
in: Jessica Elbert Decker, Dylan Winchock (eds), Borderlands and liminal subjects, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
Fernandez examines the significance of Murray's juxtaposition of a colonial narrative of cross-cultural contact with a contemporary narrative of postcolonial deterritorialized and displaced communities. Focusing on magical indigenous characters, Murray produces a Borderland Narrative that moves across time and between intersecting accounts of oppression. She reinforces the idea of "polyphonic meaning" rather than a singular colonizing narrative; and by utilizing pre-Hispanic mythology as a foundational narrative, she nonviolently critiques and resists the overarching European colonial project.