The City as a Place of Dialogue, Negotiation and Struggle in Terri de la Peña and Mona Ruiz

The multicultural city is a popular setting of many Chicana narratives and short stories. However, in many contemporary works by Chicana authors it loses its typical function of providing a background to the story solely and becomes an active agent that reflects the struggles of its inhabitants. This negotiation is also seen in the interplay between the barrio and the city that is depicted in Chicana literature. This depiction of the city as a place of dialogue, negotiation and struggle against conformity is especially interesting in the two works by two Chicana authors – The Faults by Terri de la Peña and Two Badges: The Lives of Mona Ruiz by Mona Ruiz. Terri de la Peña makes L.A. an arena of fight against sexual conformity, male violence, and against conforming to restricting social norms. Ruiz, on the other hand, concentrates on the relation between the barrio and the city. In her personal story she presents different aspects of non-conformity, which is especially visible in the transformation of her own life, (namely her passage from a gang member to a policewoman in Santa Ana) and her struggle not to conform in both situations. The aspect of dialogue and negotiation is emphasized in both books at the linguistic level, as well, as both authors use code-switching. The purpose of my paper is to compare the two works and analyze the portrait of a contemporary multicultural city that emerges from these books, concentrating on the aspect of the city as a place of (non)conformity in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexuality and class.