Ana Castillo’s So Far from God is a selection of Chicana feminist movement which is based on the struggle of woman not having a role in society, but rather than only having a male-domination society which “her roles are typically in the home and she is isolated from and ignorant to the world surrounding her” (Chicana Feminism). This book illustrates feminism in many different ways as the culture in this book is surrounded by a male-domination society. Castillo portrays this concept of the different stereotypes that society thinks about Mexican women such as gender and sexuality roles.…
Gender roles and expectations change depending on the community, what may be considered to be feminine or masculine in one community may not be in a different community. In “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” by Judith Ortiz Cofer, juxtaposed to the previous writers, conveys her argument through the use of personal anecdote. Cofer narrates her experience as a Latin girl growing up in America. Through the appeal of ethos she explains how as a teenager she was taught to behave as a “proper senorita” (Cofer, 371) encouraged to look and act like a women. This made her feminine in the eyes of her community, however her Anglo friend and mothers found them too “mature”(Cofer, 371) for their age.…
The movie Mosquita y Marí, is a great representation of what it's like living in an urban community and their everyday lifestyle. We are introduced to the two main characters Mosquita and Marí, we see differences between the two, between their lifestyles, and personalities. After meeting each other they created a bond like no other. Therefore, the girls go through obstacles that the only they both can understand which were the roles as young Latina females, Mosquita trying to find her own identity drowned in her parent's dreams, and the two questioning their own sexualities. While identifying the popular culture in the film.…
Throughout the history, woman have been viewed as a companion and complement of the male figure, but also, as individuals without rights. Women had always been discriminated, humiliated, and relegated only to the role of wives and mothers. Therefore, it not unusual that in the middle of 19th. Century, Mexican women in California have been seen as “bad girls”.…
Youth and Growing up & Growing up Female Women and femininity play an important part in the novel “The House On Mango Street,” by Sandra Cisneros. The majority of the characters are predominantly women. The main character and narrator’s views on growing up as a female shaped most of the novel. Esperanza believes beauty is a sign of feminine power, but being beautiful comes with a price, Throughout the novel, Sandra Cisneros's reveals her views of women. In “The House on Mango Street,” Cisneros explores the challenges women face both within their own culture, showing the absence of self control over their lives and physique and presenting the need of women’s rights.…
“Yolanda” and “Mrs. Perez,” the two chapters in Oscar Casares’ Brownsville, present a distinct perspective on the machismo persona of Mexican-American men along with its negative impact on male/female relationships. Frank and Agustin, the entitled characters’ husbands, dictate their wives’ decisions by subjecting them to patriarchal beliefs rather than allowing them to be independent in their decisions. Patriarchal relationships create men as the center of relationships, which enforces control over women to stabilize this belief. The controlling and prideful characteristics in the characters of Frank and Agustin assert a male dominance that prevents women like Yolanda and Mrs. Perez from partaking in jobs or enjoyable activities, which in turn,…
Both Oscar Zetas Autobiography of the Brown Buffalo and Ana Castillo’s Novel So Far From God are examples of the use of magic realism and mythology in Chicano/a literature. However, both pieces of Chicano/a literature display their own unique interpretation of self-identity. Beginning with the plot of the Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, Oscar is a lawyer at the East Oakland Legal Aid society. He drives to his office in downtown San Francisco only to discover that his secretary, who usually does most of the work for him, has died over the weekend.…
Equality is something that is perpetually strived for, but seldom achieved. In the novella The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the protagonist, Esperanza, does not want to continue the cycle of inequality. Throughout the story, Esperanza continually sees women in her life treated like objects in a society that values women for their looks, and not for what is on the inside. In the thread of gender roles, a theme that is developed is that men do not treat women as their equals, but instead as something that can be possessed and dominated. This theme is developed throughout the stories Esperanza tells about her great-grandmother’s resentment of being a married woman, Rafaela’s lack of freedom in her marriage, and the troubles Minerva…
Demi Lovato argues that “scars are like battle wounds - beautiful in a way. They show what you’ve been through and how strong you are for coming out of it.” In The House on Mango Street, a novella by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza has pearly scars all over her body as a result of her turbulent childhood. Through persisting in strong feminist views throughout the maelstrom of growing up, however, Esperanza is able to become a strong woman, capable of anything. Cisneros’ use of point of view and characterization in this novella evinces the theme that feminism is vital to developing one’s character and setting oneself free from the terror and tribulation of their childhood.…
This sketch is a vivid representation of how Latin Americans used race and gender as categories for which to organize society and to perpetrate honor. These social constructs shaped the experiences of men and women of different ethnic and socioeconomic…
From a historical perspective, the U.S.-Mexican border was changed after the war’s ending, placing Mexican people living on the border as “strangers in their own land” (short stories 389). Although a dangerous place, the border is also a space of fertility, where language and cultures take new meanings, “places where the fluidity of cultures allows new formulations and transformations to occur” (Short stories for students 88). Only by moving from the comfortable house of her father, where ideologies are not questioned, Cleofilas can discover a new way of imagining a woman’s life. It is on the borderline where Cleofilas meets Felice, a woman grown at the edge of two cultures that “has acquired a flexibility of mind which allows her to go back and forth across the gender border, from the Virgen to Tarzan” (Wyatt 164). Felice’s model of strength and independence fascinates Cleofilas, and determines her to review her own conceptions about women’s…
Many of the Latin American stories consist of depicting death, loss, oppression, and in some odd ways the obstacles in love. Everything unfolds in a surreal way while others convey magical realism into their plots; making each spun tale more alluring and breath taking. In the nineteenth century Latin America was transitioning from a world where society was its people spoke out and rebelled against those of higher authority with the goal of gaining freedom. However, for the most part there was a lot of terrorizing of the town folk, torture and death as far as the eye could see.…
Sandra Cisneros’ work Woman Hollering Creek and other stories embodies what it is like in all stages of life as a woman on both sides of the Mexican border. The women 's personal stories as they get older in life show signs of violence, whether mentally, physically or emotionally. “Woman Hollering Creek” and “Never Marry a Mexican” show the violent relationship men and women share, and why Cisneros chose to represent it this way. The story Woman Hollering Creek describes a woman named Cleofilas experiencing married life.…
The film Like Water for Chocolate, although a parable of the Mexican Revolution, demonstrates that women like Tita maintained Mexican traditions while at the same time women experienced further freedoms created by the Revolution. That being said, though, neither the Constitution nor the other articles discussed in this section, do not necessarily provide a broad enough picture to understand the changes to women’s roles within Mexican…
Through the collection of poetry from the works titled, When My Brother Was An Aztec, Natalie Diaz delves deep into her childhood trauma through very imaginative and often unexpected ways. This collection is broken up into three sections, the first section focuses on the racism and oppression that Diaz experienced growing up as a Native American woman with poems such as “The Gospel of Guy No-Horse” which approaches this topic through humor. The second section of poems emphasizes how Diaz was consumed by her bother and his drug habits through poems like “How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs.” While section three concentrates on Diaz’s life outside of her brother through poems such as “Toward the Amaranth Gates of War or Love.” Although…