Please join the English department next Wednesday, December 7, in the Barry Art Gallery from 3:30-5:00 pm to hear Dr. Leigh Johnson present on her Work in Progress–“Exiles from the ‘Familiar Country’: Maria Cristina Mena, Katherine Anne Porter, and the White Savior Myth.”
When Katherine Anne Porter arrived in Mexico in 1920, it didn’t take long for her to declare it her “familiar country.” Her writings about Mexico appeared in American magazines shortly after Mexican exile Maria Cristina Mena’s stories stopped appearing. Strikingly, both women’s stories contain ambivalent commentary about white women’s presence in Mexican Revolutionary politics. Dr. Johnson will discuss this gendered hemispheric violence in Mena’s “The Gold Vanity Set” and “The Education of Popo” and Porter’s “Flowering Judas.”
Food and lively discussion will follow Dr. Johnson’s presentation!
