Chicana Epistemology

For Perez, Chicana/o history is not resolvable and must continually be debated and comprehended as multiple and unstable. Perez, like other Chicana theorists, initiates an added dimension that recognizes that woman’s voices and their stories have become subordinated to a colonist racial mentality and to a male consciousness. Perez argues that the quintessential historical accounts. Women become appendages to men’s history, the interstitial ‘and’ tacked on as an afterthought’ (12). Nevertheless, Perez also suggests that even though some stories have not been told, does not define their existences, asserting, “Chicana, Mexican, India, Mestiza actions, words spoken and unspoken, survive and persist whether they are acknowledged or not” (7). The task of locating the voices of the Chicana are often discharged or lowered by the dominant groups.

You can see how Maria’s El Salvador is empty of people, full only of romantic ideas. Jose Luis’s image of El Salvador, in contrast, totally invokes manufactured weapons; violence. Maria’s “self-projection elides Jose Luis’s difference” and illustrates “how easy it is for the North American characters, including the big-hearted María, to consume a sensationalized, romanticized, or demonized version of the Salvadoran or Chicana in their midst” (Lomas 2006, 361). Marta Caminero-Santangelo writes: “The main thrust of the narrative of Mother Tongue ... continually ... destabilize[s] the grounds for ... a fantasy of connectedness by emphasizing the ways in which [Maria’s] experience as a Mexican American and José Luis’s experiences as a Salvadoran have created fundamentally different subjects” (Caminero-Santangelo 2001, 198). Similarly, Dalia Kandiyoti points out how Maria’s interactions with José Luis present her false assumptions concerning the supposed “seamlessness of the Latino-Latin American connection” (Kandiyoti 2004, 422). So the continual misinterpretations of José Luis and who he really is and has been through on Maria’s part really show how very far away her experiences as a middle-class, U.S.-born Chicana are from those of her Salvadoran lover. This tension and resistance continues throughout their relationship.

The idea of mestiza consciousness is an acknowledgement of both the genetic and cultural mixing that come from falling between the cracks of two cultures. Gloria Anzaldua uses the idea of mestiza consciousness to describe the constant shifting between two or more cultures that Chicana women experience. She describes the issues that arise within various communities due to an “us vs. them” mentality, and argues that mestiza consciousness can also act as a tool to heal these wounds, and to reshape one’s identity by merging various identities.

This highlights that Chicanas prefer Chicanos more than they prefer each other; they perpetuate gender hierarchy by constantly placing males above females. Chicanas fear the criticism they will endure if they defy gender boundaries. Joan Riviere addresses this phenomenon in her essay “Womanliness as a Masquerade. Her essay explores the discomfort that woman feel when they act outside of the boundaries established by a male dominated society. In one example, she describes a

Anzaldúa recounts her experience growing up in a community where her Chicana culture wasn’t widely accepted. She would be punished for speaking the language her culture influenced to create a language, which corresponds to a way of life. In Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” the variety of languages helps her compare, contrast and define her argument of the distinguished languages concerning her Chicana identity.

We live in a society where for decades we have been socialized to believe that there are only two genders: male and female. The idea of gender is socially constructed. Society and culture create gender roles and through those roles we all learn to enact our specific roles. With this in mind, this essay will seek to examine how gender shapes the structural and lived experiences of Chicanxs and Latinxs in the U.S. This essay will draw from Abrego, Acosta, Ocampo, and the documentary “No mas bebés” to see how gender affects an individual’s experiences in the U.S.

Young Chicana women typical expectations are to follow the parents’ rules. In the films “Mosquita Y Mari” and “Real Women have curves”, the young Chicana women resist these gender cultural norms. The resistance of these gender norms is not a challenge to others but away to voice the opinion that I am my own person and not somebody else.

With this came a patriarchal movement with the anthem “Yo soy Chicano” and an ideology of “Chicano = Machismo”. Women within the Chicano movement were afforded one of three roles: mothers, nuns or whores. They were not allowed self determination. This stemmed from the idea that men were the ones that were rising against oppression, when in fact women “broke their shackles and stabbed the spirit of injustice when confronted in the fields by a shotgun, when bloodied on the streets”, when constructed under the violence of “Anglo/chauvinism or Chicano machismo.” The transition from Chicano to Chicana was in protest of previous marginalization and a step towards representation and manifestation. (I Throw Punches, Chabram,

In this article, “The Myth of the Latin Woman” Cofer has talked about many incidents from her life where she was talked about, from a young girl the adult life. Ortiz Cofer is so ardent about this topic of stereotyping Latin women because she was a native women of the Puerto Rico area who really grew up in the United States. There is how she witnessed firsthand how hurtful stereotyping could be. In “The Myth of the Latin Woman”, She has repeated use of Spanish words in the essay to shows her audience how proud she is of the Latin heritage. she continuously uses other words, such as Puerto Rican, and Latina to stress the names she heard growing up. Because she has been brought up to love her Latin culture, she was often stereotyped here in the United States. As you can see, this is why she became so involved with trying to bring people so much awareness to the

Norma Elia Cantu’s novel “Canícula: Imágenes de una Niñez Fronteriza” (“Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera”), which chronicles of the forthcoming of age of a chicana on the U.S.- Mexico border in the town of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo in the 1940s-60s. Norma Elia Cantú brings together narrative and the images from the family album to tell the story of her family. It blends authentic snapshots with recreated memoirs from 1880 to 1950 in the town between Monterrey, Mexico, and San Antonio, Texas. Narratives present ethnographic information concerning the nationally distributed mass media in the border region. Also they study controversial discourse that challenges the manner in which the border and its populations have been

A life in the city of Seguin, Texas was not as easy as Cleofilas, the protagonist of the story thought it would be. The author, Cisneros describes the life women went through as a Latino wife through Cleofilas. Luckily, Cisneros is a Mexican-American herself and had provided the opportunity to see what life is like from two window of the different cultures. Also, it allowed her to write the story from a woman’s point of view, painting a vision of the types of problems many women went through as a Latino housewife. This allows readers to analyze the characters and events using a feminist critical view. In the short story “Women Hollering Creek” Sandra Cineros portrays the theme of expectation versus reality not only through cleofilas’s thoughts but also through her marriage and television in order to display how the hardship of women in a patriarchal society can destroy a woman’s life.

Anzaldua identifies as a part of an emerging new mestiza consciousness and community, which strives to move beyond simple dualistic thinking and endeavors to “act and not react” This important contradiction lies at the heart of Anzaldua’s analysis. “From this racial, ideological, cultural, and biological cross-pollicization, an ‘alien’ consciousness is presently in the making — a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a consciousness of the Borderlands.” (Anzaldua, 1987, 420). Anzaldua’s proposition of the new consciousness mediates social relations, revolutionary social change, and its wider relevance to feminist theory through discussions of the Borderlands and its implications for ‘identity.’

The call for feminism marks the beginning of an extensive journey with the quest to inspire women and to advocate women right in a male governed the world. Gloria Anzaldúa and Maxine Kingston both scrutinize feminism in the framework of “Borderland: La Frontera: The New Mestiza” and “The Women Warrior” encouraging women to occupy a strong position in the post-colonial male led civilization. The author both traces the journey of women struggle to achieve rewarding role within the structure shaped by men. The alliance of different voice from disregarded women gestures a strong theme that inspires Maxine Hong Kingston and Gloria Anzaldua to write enthusiastically within the feminist topic to dispute the patriarchal society.

One of the most influential parts of Gloria Anzaldúa’s work is her concept of a mestiza consciousness and how it can be utilized to help us better understand and even accept the multiculturalism within our ethnic identity. Being a Mexican American or Chicana can be a complicated experience because of how the two worlds are divided in more ways than one. Not only is it challenging to find a sense of belonging when you’re divided by a physical and theoretical border, but it also takes a toll on the psyche to consistently adjust oneself in order to fit the scene. However, the mestiza consciousness is an inclusive and universal mindset that enables Chicanas to embrace all aspects of their identity, without having to sacrifice part of themselves in order to fit a concrete definition. Coinciding with Chicana feminism, the mestiza consciousness empowers women and enables them to celebrate their culture and

These Latina women are strong, independent, and given roles equal to men in the book without detracting from their femininity. Unfortunately, the equality given to the women in Marquéz’s book is not doled out to the women in George Saunders’s short story, The Semplica-Girl