Detetives transculturais: rompendo fronteiras na ficção criminal

Abstract

This article analyzes Lucha Corpi’s Eulogy for a Brown Angel (1992) and T. E. Wilson’s Mezcalero (2015). We seek to understand how their detectives, Gloria Damasco and Ernesto Sánchez, respectively, raise questions of identity, especially in relation to gender and ethnicity, and also bring multiculturalism and subalternity into their contexts. Corpi was born in Mexico and lives in the United States, while Wilson was born in Canada and lives in Mexico, and both write their detective fiction in English. The writing of these authors is a space of cultural resistance, expression of differences and alternative identity representations of members of groups marginalized by dominant society. While Damasco, a Chicana woman, begins her journey in criminal investigation as an amateur, reconciling her roles as wife and mother, Sánchez, a Trans man, begins his career as a police officer in Canada and later becomes a private investigator in Mexico. With the help of Schindler (2023) and Portilho (2009, 2016), among others, we analyze how the intersections between these two characters are approached, especially with regard to gender issues, highlighting how they subvert detective literature, which in its most widespread facet is still predominantly a straight cis white male narrative.