Date Thesis Awarded

4-2020

Access Type

Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only

Degree Name

Bachelors of Arts (BA)

Department

English

Advisor

Jon Pineda

Committee Members

Hermine Pinson

Scott Challener

Silvia R. Tandeciarz

Abstract

The Sun Sets on Chinchontepec is a collection of poetry and prose written in the style of a "fictional memoir." This project explores a mosaic of Salvadoran memory by spanning different narrators, intimacies, motivations, and histories to imagine makeshift recollections of Salvadoran experiences and timelines. The collection moves through images of chaos, the mundane, and the supernatural alike, re-told or imagined, to develop a metaphysical relationship with the landscape that the author observes. A bilingual text, this collection also navigates the power and instability of language, separation, and communion. This project struggles to interpret and memorialize all that has been shared and lost through oral tradition or censorship of the State at different moments in Salvadoran history and the author's family history. Finally, it is a deeply reflective collection that questions the purpose of poetry of witness and the relationship between the act of honoring,appropriation, political memory, and material reality.

Recommended Citation

Campos, Aida, "The Sun Sets on Chinchontepec: (Re)productions of Salvadoran Memory" (2020). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 1443.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/1443