ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a critique of Western feminisms, including a critique of intersectional scholarship that is complicit in the elision of nation as an organizing dimension of difference and inequality. Siobhan Somerville is a professor of English, gender and women's studies, and African American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Somerville's intellectual contributions span feminist theory, queer studies, critical Black studies, and American literature, and her more recent scholarship has turned toward the intersections of sexuality, race, and nation. She examines the legal production of the naturalized citizen for the ways in which the state itself, in contrast to the more abstract concept of "nation", produces citizens. Heather Hewett examines the film La Misma Luna for its depiction of a mother fighting to maintain a relationship with her son across the US-Mexico border. She finds that the film offers an implicit critique of US immigration policy and dramatic images of the hardships facing single immigrant mothers.
