The Development Of Chicana Identities Throughout The Twentieth Century By Showing

In Gloria Anzaldua 's ‘La Conciencia de la Mestiza,’ the concept of ‘mestiza’ is born out of an exclusionary attitude. However, Anzaldua speaks of the ‘new mestiza,’ which is a Chicana (Mexican-American/Anglo) embodied by the amalgamation of her native ancestors cultural elements, typically of Latin American, American Indian, European, or Pilipino descent. The ‘new mestiza,’ embraces ‘white exclusionary politics’

In “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria,” Judith Ortiz Cofer illustrates several hardships she suffered due to the universal, misleading stereotypes propagated by the media. Cofer demonstrates various stereotypes that Latin women are subjected to, such as an experience in which she was regarded as a waitress at a California restaurant, and “the Hispanic woman as the ‘Hot Tamale’ or sexual firebrand” (63).She also states that she was taught to act like a woman when she was a teenager and encouraged to dress maturely, which made her peers laughed at her (64). At the end of the article, Cofer concludes that she hopes to change the

Caminero-Santangelo, Marta. 2007. On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

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.

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.

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

Despite the struggles and never ending discrimination Las Hijas de Chautemoc faced, they continued to fight and push forward. Moreover, Blackwell also communicates that Las Hijas de Chautemoc were established early in the 1900's. Anna NietoGomez describes how she felt when she first read how this women also struggled in the past decades. NietoGomez states that she had finally found the light she had long been seeking for. It gave her comfort to know that there had existed women like her and she saw them as role models from there on. The discovery of the early Hijas de Chautemoc further solidified and encouraged the Chicana movement. Another contributor to the Chicana movement was the use of images. They were either sexualized in these images

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.’

Throughout the years, women’s participation has been overlooked by the general public, where their contributions to civil rights movements has been belittled or removed from history all together. Their hard work is often accredited to men, where women are forced to remain silent and oppressed - all while depicted as unintelligent second-class citizens who belong in the kitchen in both the Latino community and the Anglo community. The Chicano Movement itself is a gendered movement, in which only men have portrayed as leader of El Moviemnto where whenever one googles the term ‘Chicano Movement’ the images that come up are of Cesar Chavez, Rodolfo Gonzalez or Jose Angel Gutierrez – all men. In the 1960s, the image of the Soldaderas was adopted by the Chicana feminists’ movement as a symbol of revolutionary womanhood and female resistance. During the Mexican Revolution, a new breed of women

When the number of native speakers and second language speakers are combined, the United States, with its roughly 50 million Spanish speakers, is the second largest Spanish speaking country in the world, behind only Mexico and ahead of Colombia, Spain and Argentina. Some projections indicate that the US could even surpass Mexico by 2050 and become the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country.

Chicana feminists choose to represent the Virgin of Guadalupe in non-traditional ways mainly for many reasons. One reason is to try to reclaim her from the Catholic Church as a sexual being rather than the docile submissive role model the church portrays her as . Thus, Chicana feminist’s artists try to portray her in a more sexual manner, as “Guadalupe the sex goddess, a goddess who makes me feel good about my sexual power, my sexual energy” to empower Chicana women by example rather than serving as a piece of the Church’s propaganda . Alma Lopez’s Our Lady is an excellent example of this, displaying Our Lady of Guadalupe in a revealing two-piece outfit while also carrying herself confidently to show that she is not ashamed of who she is .

Yet Moraga writing style is very difficult to comprehend at first, due to the barrier that she create by using Spanish and English. Moraga’s choice of words force the reader’s flow to be caught off guard and roots it to focus on every details. She blends both languages together that challenge the reader to understand the multiple categories of her. As she write her struggles to define herself in relation to others, (mainly in the Chicana/o community), she also makes it a challenge for the readers to fully access her trials at first read. In the article “Cherríe Moraga’s Loving in the War Years: lo que nunca pasó por sus labios: Auto-ethnography of the “New Mestiza,” Cloud states that “the placement of her own personal experiences within the context of her community enables Moraga to capture successfully the struggle of an entire people for individual and collective autonomy” (86). Clouds argue that Moraga purposely writes for an “all in one” perspective that can be very challenging for reader to understand. She admits that, “Loving in the War Years first part speaks to the confusion and personal struggle that characterized its author’s formative years, no more so than in its poetic parts. Much of the inner turmoil that pervades Moraga’s self-portrayal revolves around the collision course that is the confluence of her two ethnic identities: Chicana and American” (91). With this reason, the only way that Moraga could have directly and explicitly share her

Why do you think the experience of Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban immigrants has been so different? Remember to think about this within the context of their historical experience as well as considering the nature of American society at the time of their arrival. Also consider Taking Sides 4.2 Remember that Latinos are NOT a racial group.

Hi, my name is Weihang Ding who comes from China.  Quanzhou is my hometown, which locates in southeast of China.  I have never left my hometown until I graduated from high school.  My interest is drawing, especially the sketch.  However, I do not study it systematically, so it is only as a hobby rather than a specialty. Before choosing management as major, I always have a dream about being a designer when I was young.