Witches and reproductive solidarity in Mexican history and literature. The case of Fernanda Melchor’s genderfluid bruja in “Temporada de huracanes”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17169/ogj.2026.323Keywords:
Colonialism, Literature, Mexico, Reproduction, WitchAbstract
Starting from the premise that the persecution of witches in its global dimension played a considerable role in the historical binarization and hierarchization of gender, in the establishment of gender roles, and the development of reproductive (in)justice, the article explores to what extent the represented fluidity of the witch in Fernanda Melchor’s novel Temporada de huracanes (Mexico, 2017) makes this process reconstructible and, at the same time, deconstructs it. With reference to historical evidence of witch-hunting in the Spanish colonial empire, the article examines the literary procedures of representing the gender fluidity of the figure of Melchor’s witch in connection with her reproductive activities. The investigation of this connection harbors emancipatory potential for anti-essentialist approaches to questions of reproductive justice beyond literary criticism.
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