ABSTRACT
This chapter explores new insights into discussions of stranger cosmopolitanism in Latinx studies by focusing on the representation of the transnational literary space of the US–Mexico borderlands in Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels (2019). Written and published during Trump’s presidency, Urrea questions stereotypes that dehumanize and relegate Latinxs and Mexican nationals to the category of second-class citizens. Urrea’s multigenerational Mexican–American family saga delineates circular migratory processes between Mexico and the United States that transcend borders and binaries. This chapter will examine the multiple borders represented in the novel to reveal how The House of Broken Angels navigates and ultimately bridges dialectical tensions between the self and the ‘Other,’ the real and the imagined, the personal and the collective, literature and politics, as well as national and transnational forces. The outcome of this analysis could be compared to a cartography in which multiple times, spaces, and subjectivities converge in the articulation of alternative forms of understanding the cosmopolitan stranger. Ultimately, Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels offers a discursive space where tensions meet and are negotiated, leading to a dialogue between literary and political discourses.
