Gloria Chicacana Mestiza Consciousness

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.

Despite being outcasted by other feminist groups such as the mainstream Chicano movement, and the second wave feminist movement, they wanted to set themselves apart through the use of their own personal experiences with gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class structure, and so forth. This term relates to Mexican-American and Hispanic women who oppose the traditional “household wife” role. They challenged the fundamental ideologies women, and young women are taught at an early age, and breaks away from the idea that men have dominion over women. This can also be categorized as a movement that fights against stereotypes against women. This term is important in context to our reading’s because this movement paved way for Chicano women to make their voice heard in their community. Just like we familiarize ourselves with key men in the Chicano movement, women also wanted to describe their experiences, and social injustices they were challenged with because they were women on top of other

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

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.

One of the primary aspects of colonial Spanish life that is depicted in many Casta paintings, and represents signifiant racial tensions at the time, is the depiction of mixed race, or mixed nationality people, who are present, or the subjects of many Casta paintings. Although the Casta system, and the Casta paintings that depict this system encompass a wide and deeply complex racial hierarchy, there are some significant racial distinctions that are prominent in many Casta paintings. Some of the main racial and national distinctions seen in many Casta paintings are, Criollos (Mainly Spanish, or other Europeans who were born in America), Mestizos (A person with one Native American parents and one European parent), Mulatos (A person with one African parent and one European parent), and Negros (African). Although these terms would often be considered to be highly offensive in modern day America, they are culturally relevant, as they were commonly used at the time of the Casta system. This essay will explore the depictions of these four groups of people in Casta paintings, and how these paintings help to illuminate the racial tensions, hierarchies, and cultural changes occurring in Hispanic America during the 17th century.

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,

Although I can’t specifically relate to Gloria Anzaldúa’s struggle between her languages in “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” I can relate to her “kind of dual identity” in which she identifies with neither Anglo-American cultural values nor Mexican cultural values (1566). Being half white, half Chinese, I struggle identifying as either identity, especially because my mom (who is Chinese) never learned Cantonese and largely became Americanized in her childhood. It’s an uncomfortable position to be in when racial and ethnic identity are so significant in America and when I must interact with the world as part of both the majority and the marginalized. Considering my own struggle and the conflict Anzaldúa describes, it became clearer to me the way race relations in American not only marginalize people of color but train our consciousnesses to damage ourselves. Before I turn back to Anzaldúa, a novel I’ve recently read, William Godwin’s Caleb Williams has also been on my mind, particularly in Godwin’s portrayal of how police surveillance transforms us into agents of our own oppression. Although Caleb is a white man, he also experiences a split consciousness as his values and characteristics are whittled away by the paranoia of constant surveillance.

Gloria Anzaldúa writes of a Utopic frame of mind, the borderlands created in and lived in by the new mestiza. She describes the preexisting natures of the Anglos, Mexicanos, and Chicanos as seen around the southwest U.S. / Mexican border, indicative of the nations at large. She also probes the borders of language, sexuality, psychology and spirituality. Anzaldúa presents this information in various identifiable ways including the autobiography, historical/informative essay, and poetry. What is unique to Anzaldúa is her ability to weave a ‘perfect’ kind of compromised state of mind that melds together the preexisting cultures while simultaneously formulating a fusion of genres that stretches previously

The story illustrates the overlapping influences of women’s status and roles in Mexican culture, and the social institutions of family, religion, economics, education, and politics. In addition, issues of physical and mental/emotional health, social deviance and crime, and social and personal identity are

Gloria Anzaldua is among the many feminist theorists that has moved into the realm of addressing post-modern identities. In Gloria Anzaldua’s articulation of the new mestiza consciousness, she makes the argument of identities as multiple, hybrid, and more specifically created as a result of the Borderlands. However, according to Anzaldua, and despite the difficulties engendered by her very existence, the mestiza is also a figure of enormous potential, as her multiplicity allows a new kind of consciousness to emerge. This mestiza consciousness moves beyond the binary relationships and dichotomies that characterize traditional modes of thought, and seeks to build bridges between all minority communities to achieve social and political change.

The effects of marginalization can be seen in Gloria Anzaldua’s essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” She is an American writer who expresses her feelings about social and cultural struggles that Americans with a deep Mexican heritage like her face when being raised in the United States. Anzaldua believes that everyone in the minority ethnic group is expected to be submissive and impressionable therefore, she conforms and identifies herself as four different things depending on the situation. She sees herself as Spanish when referring to her linguistic group. She sees herself as an Indian when referring to her genes. She sees herself as Spanish-American when talking with other Spanish-speaking people. Finally, she sees herself as Mexican-American when talking to Americans. This unclear way of perceiving herself

By the late eighteenth century, the New World, which was still remote, had formed its own complicated individual and national identities. Moreover, the disparate communities within Latin America had established a unique culture characterized by its hybridity. A close reading of Ignacio de Castro’s From Spaniard and Indian, a Mestizo is born and Agostino Brunias’s Planter and His Wife with a Servant reveals the racial hierarchy that formed amid Latin America’s hybridity. Additionally, both objects specifically express Latin American hybridity for a white, European class, likely as a means to demystify and boost the standing of the New World. Deceivingly similar in terms of style and subject, as both contain three figures of varying cultural

I was thrilled while reading the Sex Goddess of SANDRA CISNEROS. It was an impressive and unique way of depicting the struggle that most Litinas women experience when it come to their personal intimacy. Even though this reading concern only the Latinas world, I would like to extend it to a broader community, my population. Before even doing so, I will share the fact that reading this essay appeal some emotions that I thought I would not have. It had a sense of belonging to the Mexican community, the values they extol, and the sense of family they preserve. Through this essay, I felt my three little sisters, I felt my mother, I felt my grandmother, I felt every single female gender from my community. I felt the pain those girl feel whenever

One must learn to adjust themselves to the dominant culture while having their own cultural values, Anzaldua called it “plural personality”. Mestiza for her is possibility of thinking at border length. Rejection of binary thinking of border and it system of diffraction. All cultural identity is built in the story that is being told which passed down culture, identity and traditions. This encourages tolerance of ambiguity. There’s no Mestiza for her because it’s tainted and forged through power and domination. It’s a combination of inequality, rejection of traditional culture and the acceptance to create a new culture that gives rise to a new consciousness. Anzalua’s “new” identity is very significant to idea to a certain extent, other than defining herself according to society’s definition of what constitutes being Hispanic