Un-Homey States: Econo-Mimetics of Homelessness in US Latinx Poetry

Abstract

“Un-Homey States” uses Freud’s influential elaboration of the concept of the uncanny to address questions of citizenship, authorized and unauthorized immigration, and forms of radical, often violent depatriation and practical, existential homelessness, all of compelling, urgent interest over recent decades to US Latinx studies writ large; the section then deploys Freud’s concept to read closely works of lyrical verse by a trio of Chicanx poets, Eduardo Corral, Rigoberto González, and Ada Limón, who have published important collections in the second decade of the twenty-first century, a period conditioned simultaneously by state failures precipitating from both the financial collapse of 2008 and the indefinite stalemate on comprehensive immigration reform in the United States.