Writing ruination and control in New York City: Ernesto Quiñonez’s Chango’s Fire and José Rivera’s Marisol

Abstract

This essay demonstrates the connection between the processes of “ruination” (a term I borrow from Ann Stoler to explain deliberate abandonment and destruction in contemporary urban spaces) and the surveillance/control of bodies (particularly everyday forms of control by nonstate actors) and argues that the necropolitical strategies of ruination and control are important lenses through which to read Latinx urban fiction (I use “Latinx,” now an increasingly common term in popular media and academic and activist contexts that is inclusive of gender identities beyond the binary Latina/o. I use “Latina” and “Latino” when the gender needs to be specified as female or male). Focusing on Jose Rivera’s 1992 play Marisol and Ernesto Quinonez’s (2004) novel Chango’s Fire, I show how imaginative writing reveals the everyday workings and psychic effects of urban necropolitics. Through particular narrative strategies and aesthetic choices, as well as exploration of the effects of ruination and control on Latinx lives and identities, Rivera and Quinonez’s works contribute to our understanding of urban processes, as well as serving as a reclamation of place, by turning on their heads ideas about racialized space as worthless, “dead,” or ripe for conquest.