The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how Mexican author Cristina Rivera Garza (Matamoros, 1964) critiques gender in her novels. In an era of prolific publications dealing with gender, Rivera Garza's work stands out for its fresh critique of how socially gendered modes of behavior are "written" into the social code. I argue that she exposes latent and explicit gender prejudices and then literally and metaphorically rewrites gender expectations. Central to her objective is to quash binary divisions (masculine/feminine, male/female, privileged/marginalized) to create a space for nuanced, complex characters in her novels. Rivera Garza employs the metaphor of writing to weaken these gendered divisions and in doing so, she destabilizes the division between literary genres.
