On the death of mi madre, hauntings, and ethnic mourning

ABSTRACT

Months after mi madre died from breast cancer in 2005, she started haunting my dreams and this intensified my grief over her death. Fortunately, mi Mexican abuelita taught me to productively engage the specter by dialoguing with and not demonizing or colonizing mi madre’s ghost. In this performative essay, I re-member parts of my conversations with mi abuelita to argue that mi madre’s spirit represents an ethnic haunting that necessitates a process of ethnic mourning. Collective remembrance and mourning of indigena migrant bodies that roam along the border between Mexico and the U.S. challenge colonialist and national imaginaries of citizenship.

KEYWORDS:

• Hauntings
• death
• re-membering
• ethnic mourning
• migrants

Acknowledgments

The authors thanks his madre, abuelita, familia, and scholarly mentors, including Dr. Jon Bruschke, for their help in developing this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.