Female Mythologies In Contemporary Chicana Literature

Author : Nadine Gebhardt
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3638715817
Total Pages : 132 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Female Mythologies in Contemporary Chicana Literature written by Nadine Gebhardt and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-08 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald, language: English, abstract: In Mexican-American/ Chicano culture, feminine archetypes from the Mexican tradition play an important role for woman's subjectivity. Traditionally, such archetypes epitomize Catholic-patriarchal constructions of womanhood. Idolized by the figures of the Virgin of Guadalupe, La Malinche, and La Llorona, the most prevailing representations of female sexuality and motherhood evolve around the passive virgin, the sinful seductress, and the traitorous mother. Along the lines of Chicana feminism, the traditional definitions of these feminine archetypes can be seen as promoting an image of woman that is detrimental to female subjectivity. Although there are three figures, these archetypes evoke a binary opposition that defines woman as either "good woman" or "bad woman," "virgin" or "whore." As such, they limit and circumscribe the Chicana's development of subjectivity. But these cultural icons may also epitomize feminine power, and hence provide the Chicana with possible feminist role models to back up her emancipation. Chicana feminists have employed creative writing to counter the Catholic-patriarchal discourse on the Virgin of Guadalupe, Malinche, and La Llorona. As they explore these cultural archetypes in their novels, short stories, and poems, Chicana feminists attempt to reveal the mechanisms by which the original images of these mythic figures have been subverted, disempowered, and distorted. But most importantly, they seek to deconstruct the virgin/whore dichotomy by rewriting the mythic figures. Through a revision of existing myths, Chicana writers are able to create a feminist mythology that is rooted in cultural tradition but simultaneously serves as an act of resistance to the dominant discourse. This Master's thesis will explore the mythic figures of Guadalupe, Malinche, and La Llorona in all

Author : Deborah L. Madsen
Publisher : Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 9781570033797
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.9X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature written by Deborah L. Madsen and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the work of six notable authors, this text reveals characteristic themes, images and stylistic devices that make contemporary Chicana writing a vibrant and innovative part of a burgeoning Latina creativity.

Author : Alfredo Mirandé
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226531600
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book La Chicana written by Alfredo Mirandé and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1981-03-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: La Chicana is the story of a marginal group in society, neither fully Mexican or fully American, who suffer under triple oppression: as women, as members of a colonized culture, and as victims of a cultural heritage dominated by the cult of machismo. Tracing the role of Chicanas from pre-Columbian society to the present, the authors reveal the antecedents and roots of contemporary cultural expectations in Aztec, colonial, and revolutionary Mexican historical periods. A discussion of the contribution of modern Chicanas to their community and to feminism and a look at literary stereotypes and the emergence of Chicana literature to counter them round out this perceptive and sympathetic analysis.

Author : Cristina Herrera
Publisher : Cambria Press
ISBN 13 : 1604978759
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Contemporary Chicana Literature: (Re)Writing the Maternal Script written by Cristina Herrera and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on 2014-03-28 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the growing literary scholarship on Chicana writers, few, if any, studies have exhaustively explored themes of motherhood, maternity, and mother-daughter relationships in their novels. When discussions of motherhood and mother-daughter relationships do occur in literary scholarship, they tend to mostly be a backdrop to a larger conversation on themes such as identity, space, and sexuality, for example. Mother-daughter relationships have been ignored in much literary criticism, but this book reveals that maternal relationships are crucial to the study of Chicana literature; more precisely, examining maternal relationships provides insight to Chicana writers' rejection of intersecting power structures that otherwise silence Chicanas and women of color. This book advances the field of Chicana literary scholarship through a discussion of Chicana writers' efforts to re-write the script of maternity outside of existing discourses that situate Chicana mothers as silent and passive and the subsequent mother-daughter relationship as a source of tension and angst. Chicana writers are actively engaged in the process of re-writing motherhood that resists the image of the static, disempowered Chicana mother; on the other hand, these same writers engage in broad representations of Chicana mother-daughter relationships that are not merely a source of conflict but also a means in which both mothers and daughters may achieve subjectivity. While some of the texts studied do present often conflicted relationships between mothers and their daughters, the novels do not comfortably accept this script as the rule; rather, the writers included in this study are highly invested in re-writing Chicana motherhood as a source of empowerment even as their works present strained maternal relationships. Chicana writers have challenged the pervasiveness of the problematic virgin/whore binary which has been the motif on which Chicana womanhood/motherhood has been defined, and they resist the construction of maternity on such narrow terms. Many of the novels included in this study actively foreground a conscious resistance to the limiting binaries of motherhood symbolized in the virgin/whore split. The writers critically call for a rethinking of motherhood beyond this scope as a means to explore the empowering possibilities of maternal relationships. This book is an important contribution to the fields of Chicana/Latina and American literary scholarship.

Author : Debra J. Blake
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822381222
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Chicana Sexuality and Gender written by Debra J. Blake and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-31 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1980s Chicana writers including Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, and Alma Luz Villanueva have reworked iconic Mexican cultural symbols such as mother earth goddesses and La Llorona (the Wailing Woman of Mexican folklore), re-imagining them as powerful female figures. After reading the works of Chicana writers who created bold, powerful, and openly sexual female characters, Debra J. Blake wondered how everyday Mexican American women would characterize their own lives in relation to the writers’ radical reconfigurations of female sexuality and gender roles. To find out, Blake gathered oral histories from working-class and semiprofessional U.S. Mexicanas. In Chicana Sexuality and Gender, she compares the self-representations of these women with fictional and artistic representations by academic-affiliated, professional intellectual Chicana writers and visual artists, including Alma M. López and Yolanda López. Blake looks at how the Chicana professional intellectuals and the U.S. Mexicana women refigure confining and demeaning constructions of female gender roles and racial, ethnic, and sexual identities. She organizes her analysis around re-imaginings of La Virgen de Guadalupe, La Llorona, indigenous Mexica goddesses, and La Malinche, the indigenous interpreter for Hernán Cortés during the Spanish conquest. In doing so, Blake reveals how the professional intellectuals and the working-class and semiprofessional women rework or invoke the female icons to confront the repression of female sexuality, limiting gender roles, inequality in male and female relationships, and violence against women. While the representational strategies of the two groups of women are significantly different and the U.S. Mexicanas would not necessarily call themselves feminists, Blake nonetheless illuminates a continuum of Chicana feminist thinking, showing how both groups of women expand lifestyle choices and promote the health and well-being of women of Mexican origin or descent.

Author : Suzanne Bost
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780823230846
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Encarnación written by Suzanne Bost and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encarnaci+n takes a new look at identity, following the contemporary movement away from the fixed categories of identity politics toward a more fluid conception of the intersections between identities and communities. The works of Gloria Anzald+a, Cherr+e Moraga, and Ana Castillo enable us to examine how identities shift and intersect with others through processes of incarnation. Since the 1980s, critics have come to equate these writers with Chicana feminist identity politics. This critical trend, however, has been unable to account, as does Encarnaci+n, for these writers' increasing emphasis.

Author : Alvina Quintana
Publisher : Temple University Press
ISBN 13 : 1439903638
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Home Girls written by Alvina Quintana and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-30 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Home Girls makes an original, bold, and significant contribution to feminist studies, Chicana/o studies, and literature. Quintana accomplishes what few critics in Chicana/o studies have done: she applies different interpretive paradigms to her reading of Chicana texts, blending ethnography with literary criticism, ideological analysis with semiotics. Her reading of literary texts is rich in texture and detail." --Rosa Linda Fregoso, author of Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture Chicana writers in the United States write to inspire social change, to challenge a patriarchal and homophobic culture, to redefine traditional gender roles, to influence the future. Alvina E. Quintana examines how Chicana writers engage literary convention through fiction, poetry, drama, and autobiography as a means of addressing these motives. Her analysis of the writings of Gloria Anzaldua, Ana Castillo, Denise Chavez, Sandra Cisneros, and Cherrie Moraga addresses a multitude of issues: the social and political forces that influenced the Chicana aesthetic; Chicana efforts to open a dialogue about the limitation of both Anglo-American feminism and Chicano nationalism; experimentations with content and form; the relationship between imaginative writing and self-reflexive ethnography; and performance, domesticity, and sexuality. Employing anthropological, feminist, historical, and literary sources, Quintana explores the continuity found among Chicanas writing across varied genres--a drive to write themselves into being.

Author : Marta Ester Sánchez
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520052628
Total Pages : 394 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Contemporary Chicana Poetry written by Marta Ester Sánchez and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses 4 Chicana poets' "dilemmas of their dual relationship to American and Mexican societies and of their dual identity as Chicanas and as women writing in a contemporary setting."

Author : Paula García-Ramírez
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000988090
Total Pages : 235 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Weaving Tales written by Paula García-Ramírez and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays brings together a wide range of Spanish and Portuguese academics and writers exploring the ways in which our encounters with literatures in English inform our assumptions about texts and identities (or texts as identities) and the way we read them. Mapping, examining, reading and re-reading, fashioning and self-fashioning and, especially, weaving appear as appropriate images that convey the complexity and the nature of creative writing. Such a metaphor has been fundamental for the history of world literature since the Roman poet Ovid had included a tale in his Metamorphoses in which weaving, narration, uncertain identities, and the risks of telling uncomfortable truths all figure prominently. As such, these essays trace the intertwined patterns that knit texts together, weaving identities as well as undoing them and, in the process, interrogating established and official truths.

Author : Sanja Bahun-Radunović
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 9781409400011
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text written by Sanja Bahun-Radunović and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How women artists and activists across the globe employ myth to communicate personal and historical experiences of violence is the central concern of this innovative collection. Rather than compartmentalizing women's artistic production within generic or geographical boundaries, the volume encompasses literary criticism, discussion of film and art, artwork, autobiographical accounts and pieces of original creative writing, thereby promulgating an inclusive way to approach literature and the arts.