Once her father realized how Barrientos felt about her native culture, he sought to rectify her feelings by sending her to Mexico City. He told her that living there would allow her to see what Mexican culture had to offer. “That way when anybody calls you Mexican, you will hold your head up” (Barrientos, 2011, p 59). His plan worked, and now Mrs. Barrientos reveals in an enlightening tone that she has spent the…
Through her relationships with men of the Spanish conquest Isabel became "a symbol of great legal and sociological importance to the Hispanization and Christianization of Mexico" (Chipman 217). As the wife of prominent men Isabel would be a model of the Hispanicized Indian woman. It was this image that women across New Spain were expected to emulate. As Chipman says, it was this image and the principles on which it was founded that would "provide a solid matrix for a new society" (219). Isabel was an intelligent woman of status and she did not abandon her old life without just cause and apt reward. With the conquest came new and important legal principles established by the crown that meant "that Spanish law took precedence over any natural rights of Indian inheritance" (Chipman 218). Isabel realized that without integrating into this new and foreign social order she would lose everything that she was entitled to under the old order.…
as one her monograph’s greatest strengths. Diaz avoids an over-reliance on single piece evidence and mentions an array of women in the three convents. Her first several chapters study the debate occurring in Mexico and abroad over the creation of indigenous convents. Diaz then moves into examining the genres of sources written by indigenous women and their confessors to demonstrates the methods in which native women utilized their ethnic identity to position themselves in their religious space.…
Cited: Cofer, Judith Ortiz. “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria.” The…
In Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Woman’s Hollering Creek,” the main character is a young Mexican girl; who is experiencing, for the first time, what she believes to be love. However after getting married and leaving her “town of dust and despair,” (Cisneros 1592) she soon realizes that she took her home for granted. Cisneros includes multiple spots in her story to show Cleofilas’s transfer from a sheltered princess to finally having her eyes opened to reality.…
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, The Answer/La respuesta, ed. & trans. Electa Arenal & Amanda Powell (New York: Feminist Press, City University of New York, 1994) [LAm 861.39/J870.187] ——, Obras completas, ed. Alfonso Méndez Plancarte & Alberto G. Salceda, 4 vols (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1951–57) [Short Loan CRes. 861.39,J870/125 ] The complete works are available in downloadable form at the Dartmouth Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Project webpage at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sorjuana/Access.html Arenal, Electa, ‘The convent as catalyst for autonomy: Two Hispanic nuns of the seventeenth century’, in Women in Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols, ed. Beth Miller (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 147–83 [on www.barnard.columbia.edu/english/ reinventingliteraryhistory/women/juana/arenal.htm —access through Google] Franco, Jean, ‘Sor Juana explores space’, in her Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (New York: Columbia UP, 1989), 23–54 [ 396.58/F1; Short Loan CRes. 396.58/F1] Jed, Stephanie. ‘Gender, rationality and the marketing of knowledge’, in Women, Race and Writing in the Early Modern Period, ed. Margo Hendricks & Patricia Parker. London: Routledge, 1994), 195–208 [396.58/H5]. Myers, Kathleen, ‘Sor Juana’s Respuesta: Rewriting the Vitae’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 14 (1990), 459–71 [Periodicals, Orange, Floor 2] Paz, Octavio, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, o las trampas de la fe (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1981); 2nd edn (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica; 1994) [LAm 868.6,P298/158]; English trans. Sor Juana; or, The Traps of Faith, trans. Margaret Sayers Peden (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1988) [Short Loan CRes. 868.6,P298/157]; summarized in his ‘Homenaje a Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz en su Tercer Centenario (1651–1695)’, Sur, 206 (Diciembre 1951), 29–40, available on…
It is viewed that in Latino culture, men are the dominant gender, and women are submissive to their male counterparts. However, in “Rain of Gold” written by Victor Villasenor, the character of Dona Margarita, a wife and a mother, possessed strength that was even able to boldly reprimand the character of her husband. Dona Margarita’s strength and support was valued in the book as one of the reason of fulfilling the family’s dreams. She was able to express her anger and frustration on her husband, Don Victor, when he gambled and got drunk. Her family felt hope when she did not give-up her hope that her daughter, Sophia, was still alive. Although she wanted to give the leadership role to her husband Don Victor, the book made it apparent that she is the strength of her family. However, the story also depicted Dona Margarita as a housewife whose primary role is to raise her children and manage the…
Back in then in the 1920’s, everyone except the youngest daughter could get married due to the Mexican traditions that pass from generation to generation. In this novel, Like Water For Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel, Mama Elena, Tita’s mother, and had to choose between running away with the love of her life or staying with the family because the tradition did not let Mexicans and Mulatos, a breed of African American and Mexican get married. Mama Elena is most affected by tradition and her personal desire of love as she must cover up her secret love of Jose Trevino, a Mulatto, to stay respected in her family. The three things that influenced her decisions the most are that she did not get to marry the love of her life; she was forced to marry Juan De la Garza, and that tradition controlled all of the decisions she would later make.…
In Sandra Cisneros’s “Never Marry a Mexican,” the narrator, Clemencia, says “I’m amphibious. I’m a person who doesn’t belong to any class” (111). Although she speaks of economic classes, her amphibious nature applies to her love life as well. Constantly in extremes, Clemencia flip-flops between virgin and whore, the all or nothing of love and sex. Somewhere in Clemencia’s life, she decides she rather be the vamp than the wife. Her logic leads her one direction while her heart leads her another, creating a tug-o-war within herself. With Clemencia as a somewhat-unreliable narrator, a reader must stand back and look hard at what she says to see what influenced this war started within her, and how it spiraled out of control. In the beginning of…
The film “Mujeres Adelante” focuses primarily on the role of Mexican-American women, throughout major historical events (from the beginning of the Spanish conquest to the end of the 20th century). Women have been major contributors to maintaining a functional society. Throughout the film some themes that arose were in regards to the United States oppressing Mexicans, and the lack of portrayal of women as intelligent activist.…
Cited: Cofer, Judith Ortiz. “The Myth of the Latin woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria.” The…
The setting of the story “Woman Hollering Creek” reveals that women in Texas and Mexico are looked down upon and often mistreated. In the story, women in Mexico are seen as inferior once in the United States due to the lack of English spoken. The setting of the story reveals that the towns “are built so that you have to depend on husbands. Or you have to stay home.” (Cisneros 54). This reveals that women are expected to do the basic “womanly” chores. Such as clean, cook, and care for children. Cleofilas comes to find that she has no community support, no friends to console to, and lacks independence. In Mexico, Cleofilas has countless opportunities. She has a community that will support her, a family, and the sole belief in God. In the United…
Patriarchic society instills this self-hatred into Chicanas by embedding their worthlessness into the foundation of society itself. “Chicanas’ negative perceptions of ourselves as sexual persons and our consequential betrayal of each other find their roots in a four-hundred-year-long Mexican history and mythology” (39). This self-hatred is institutionalized by the creation of a myth that justifies the…
The purpose of Judith Ortiz story is to explain how hard, and at times uncomfortable it is to be a Latin woman, because of prejudice and stereotypes regarding their dress. Latin woman, are usually taught to dress in a “mature way”, which many times is confusing to both a Latina and the larger American culture. To a Latina, it is ok to dress sexy, and wear lots of jewelry, and accessories such as tight clothes, bangles, and big hoop earrings on different occasions. This style of dress however, becomes problematic particularly as it is what is taught in the culture as being formal and too often confused with being professional. For Ortiz’s generation, it was ok for woman to wear their best party clothes as she mention, to go and flirt with the boy they like in the park because they were protected by the extended family and traditional Catholic…
It’s always on the back of my mind, and resurfaces to my thoughts when i’m in any social setting regarding Spanish—my second language. I am Spanish, more so than my other nationalities. My father was born in Puerto Rico, and my mother, although being born here, along with her mother being Czechoslovakian and Polish, my mother’s father was born in Puerto Rico much like my own father. It always boggles me why I don’t look more Spanish due to the more Spanish heritage I contain. When people see me, they only see my pigment—white. They don’t see the Spanish part supposedly until I tell them, then they give me a “Right” or “I see it now” as if they’ve known or had been guessing all along. I can brush it all off my shoulder until I try to speak Spanish to others which I…