Borderland Brutalities: Violence and Resistance Along the Us-Mexico Borderlands in Literature, Film, and Culture

Reprint from hardcover, this work takes the actual violence of the southwestern United States and demonstrates how writers, artists, and filmmakers create and comment on the brutalities of our real world.

In Borderland Brutalities, Laura Elena Belmonte analyzes how border violence is perpetuated and sanctioned by private corporations as well as the US and Mexican governments and how this violence is represented through border literature and cultural production. Belmonte examines literature, art, and film produced by artists living on both sides of the border to explore how they portray this violence and how they use their art to actively resist it. This important analysis of the border will be required reading for decades to come and lays the groundwork for additional studies on borderland violence and resistance.

Laura Elena Belmonte is an assistant professor in the University of New Mexico’s Chicana and Chicano Studies Department.