@article{article_1367002, title={BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION: THE BLURRED BOUNDARIES IN NORMA ELIA CANTÚ’S BORDERLANDS NARRATIVE}, journal={World Language Studies}, volume={4}, pages={128–148}, year={2024}, author={Babacan, Tevfik Can}, keywords={Canicula, otobiyografi, Chicana edebiyatı, yaşam anlatısı, Meksika kültürü}, abstract={In the postmodern world with constant changes and instabilities, there are several literary genres that have been considered unalterable. Amongst these genres, life writing and autobiographical account writing are in the forefront and they are exceedingly open to discussion by critics in the field. With the life writing theory, the possibility of playing with the clear-cut boundaries between fact and fiction become prominent. Within this scope, the distinct and evident border between reality and fiction has commenced to be demolished by some autobiography writers. As a Chicana feminist writer, Norma Elia Cantú is one of these reformist writers whose life has also been on the borders of the United States of America and Mexico. This form of location-based autobiography is called, in Cantú’s terms, as “autobioetnography.” In her novel, Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera (1995), Cantú demonstrates life on the borderlands and the destruction of the boundaries between fact and fiction by utilizing photographs from her past. Through applying the photographs and vignettes to the narration, she contributes to the authenticity effect. Conversely, for some critics, there are minor inconsistencies between the photographs and the prose underneath them and this discolors the reliability of the life account. In a similar vein, Cantú neither accepts the fictionality in her narrative nor she denies it. This is considered to be controversial by traditional autobiography writers. In this study, there are scrutinized excerpts from Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera (1995) which are aimed to examine the relationship between the photographs, vignettes, and the following texts which, in return, underlines the issue of reliability in her autobiography in terms of the life writing theory. This study looks into certain aspects which are contextualized in Cantú’s work, such as content, structure, identity issues, customs and traditions, religious practices, feminist point of view, language, politics regarding both her personal life and the Mexican culture.}, number={2}, publisher={Ankara Sosyal Bilimler Üniversitesi}