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sufferer but also on those surrounding her. At the same time, both Morales’ and Maturana’s texts remind the reader that although bulimia strikes at an individual level, it affects all of society.
The last two chapters in this study take on the production of Chicana and Puerto Rican writers. The sixth chapter, “Food, Body, and the Chicana,” reveals how authors use food to articulate negotiations with their bodies, their languages, and their cultures in order to claim ownership of a space in the vast North American social and literary landscape.In the novel Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros uses food as a vehicle to represent the historical and social forces that shape the identities of Chicanas. The second section of this chapter analyzes HBO’s film Real Women Have Curves, based on a play by Josefina López. It deals with cultural identity and body image issues in one Chicana’s experience, reflecting the growing interest among a younger generation of Hispanic authors in addressing existing fixations with slimness.
The seventh and final chapter in the book, “Puerto Rican Perspectives,” discusses the works of three authors living on both sides of the Atlantic. In “Marina y su olor” (“Marina’s Fragrance,” 1995), Mayra Santos Febres depicts a Puerto Rican woman residing on the island; the author focuses on a woman of African heritage whose body emits irresistible food aromas. Her short story highlights issues of agency, gender, and race in Puerto Rico. Through their collection of poetry and prose Getting Home Alive (1986), Rosario Morales and her daughter Aurora Levins Morales, two authors living in the United States, present a dynamic and dialectic transatlantic perspective on their rich Puerto Rican heritage from the converse side of the Atlantic.