Latinx Literature :
Women and WLW: Texts that explore misogyny and/or female sexuality
Immigration
Creating Space: Texts that portray often untold, unheard stories rooted in identity
Rise Up and Resist
Cherrie Moraga
“Queer Aztlán: The Re-formation of Chicano Tribe” (1993)
“A Long Line of Vendidas” (1983)
Carmen María Machado
“The Husband Stitch” (2014)
“Real Women Have Bodies” (2017)
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991)- Julia Alvarez
Mexican Gothic (2020)- Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Nuyorican
Postcolonial Love Poem (2020)- Natalie Diaz
Down these Mean Streets (1967)- Piri Thomas
“AmeRícan” (1985)- Tato Laviera
“Blanket Weaver” (1975)-Sandra María Esteves
“Puerto Rican Obituary” (1973)- Pedro Pietri
13 Point Program and Platform of the Young Lords Party (1970)
“Going Cowboy" (2019)-Jennine Capó Crucet
El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán (1969)
“Imagine Me Here, or How I Became a Professor” (2019)- Jennine Capó Crucet
Walkout (2006)- Edward James Olmos
Selections from Border Correspondent- Ruben Salazar
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), Chapters 1, 2- Gloria Anzaldúa
“Waking Up from the American Dream” (2021)- Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Unaccompanied (2017)- Javier Zamora
Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment (2020)- Jillian Hernandez
-Major focus of the novel is male domination and male power over the lives of women.
-Men intrude on the autonomy of women, particularly in terms of the body. We see this in the way women are used as vehicles for the Doyle family, first with the wife giving birth to the "tumor" in Noemí's dream on page 159.
-Men are the ones causing this magic, and the women and servants are the ones who suffer. We can see an intersection between sexism, classism, and racism in the novel.
-The girls have to balance girlhood, puberty, and growing up alongside adjusting to life in a new country
-Racialized misogyny is a central theme as they each transition from girlhood to womanhood
-“My mother disproved. The outfit would only encourage me to play with Mundín and the boy cousins. It was high time I got over my tomboy phase and started acting like a young lady señorita” (228)
-"But my eyes were drawn to the face of the Virgin beside. I put my hand to my own face to make sure it was mine. My cheek had the curve of her cheek; my brows arched like her brows; my eyes had been as wide as her eyes…then I too broke into glad tidings and joy to the world with the crowd of believers around me" (255)
-Explores the exclusionary tendencies of movements and how this disrupts spaces for people with intersectional identities.
-"In those twenty years, I experienced the racism of the Women's Movement, the elitism of the Gay and Lesbian Movement, the homophobia and sexism of the Chicano Movement, and the benign cultural imperialism of the Latin American Solidarity Movement" (146)
-"My real politicization began, not through the Chicano Movement, but through the bold recognition of my lesbianism" (146)
-"Chicanos are an occupied nation within a nation, and women's sexuality are occupied within Chicano nation" (150)
in a
-Discusses not only racialized misogyny (see the title "My brother's sex was white. Mine, brown.") but also misogyny in a cultural context
-Challenges machismo and gendered expectations within the Chicano community
-This short story is based off of the story "The Green Ribbon," but this version is much more explicit in how it portrays patriarchy, power, and domination
-The ribbon acts as a symbol of autonomy, particularly that in a sexual context
-Explores power dynamics in relationships, particularly in terms of sex
-Giving birth to a son, one that destroys her body, is important because of the implications. Her body is always subject to the violence of men.
-The title itself helps realize the chilling story- in the story, real women have bodies that are in their control. They are not fading away, doomed to be laid over the dresses
-The sexual relationship between Petra and the narrator and the explicit detail of their sex is contrasted against the fading women- the narrator has never felt more alive, but she is also panicked. Similarly, Petra is very dominating, but she begins losing herself as she fades away.
-Explores not only ideas of women's autonomy and bodies but also explores lesbian sexuality
-This novel explores the aesthetics of Black women and Latinas and how they are appropriated by other people while also scorned
-Explores how gender intersects with race, sexuality, and class
-How do people within communities limit or criticize their women? She uses Nikki Minaj and contrasts Chonga parody videos to make a point about internalized misogyny/racism
-Art is the major focus, as it ties into aesthetics. The way we view art is tied to the artist's identity
-Chongas in general have a very large role, and she explains what it means to be a Chonga and their impact on Miami. She also explains Chola culture and their differences and importance in their respective communities
-Explains and explores the need for solidarity between Cubans and Black women in Miami but how it's interrupted as well.
-Talks about how girls in juvie used art through her program to find themselves and their relationship to their bodies, sexuality, and identity as a whole
-Details the racism not only at the border but in political ideologies surrounding immigration and what happens at the border
-Also details movements to support immigrants with this
-Talks about being a child of immigrants and how this identity is often placed before one's own identity as an immigrant
-The experience of first and second gen immigrants is filtered through the experience of their parents, and she introduces the idea of carrying a debt to their parents always
-The American Dream is sought after by their parents, and it's the children who must achieve it- this is the debt- but there's often a need to wake up from this dream because of an anti-immigrant, racist reality
-Pressure to succeed is much harder on kids in her position than kids who were born in America or not born to immigrants
-Theorizes the idea of a "Borderlands", the area that has been created by the border between the US and Mexico
-The Borderlands exists in a cultural space between the US and Mexico; “this is my home/ this thin edge of/ barbwire” (25). This barbwire is both a literal, physical separation between the US and Mexico but it represents the forced assimilation and cultural barrier for Chicanos as well
-The U.S.-Mexican border es una berida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country- a border culture” (25)
-Places that exists between states, a colonial tool such as the border, are in their own cultural purgatory as they cannot fit fully into either or
-Beautiful analysis of both immigrating alone/separated and assessing the borderlands
-Tributes parts to people who did not make it or aided him on the way
-Painful and gripping depictions of how families are separated and how immigrants are treated on the path
-Uses Spanglish on purpose
-Mixes both reality and fiction for this depiction
The Panza Monologues- Virginia Grise and Irma Mayorga
Theatrical piece highlighting fat women's bodies. It explains the systemic fat struggle alongside a cultural fat struggle, marrying discussions of fatphobia with racism and misogyny.
-Highlights the ways Chicanas and other women in between cultures are pushed and pulled by their fatness, be it in terms of food or in beauty standards.
-The panza is important and key- it sustains our life, it is where foods that sustain our cultures end up- yet it is so demonized. This fatphobia comes from racism for many of the women here.
-They are telling these stories right from the panza, how they felt within their stomach, how their stomach was attacked, and how they came to love and cherish it
-In this section of the novel, she comes to terms with identity while in a rural area
-She realizes something about herself in this- she tries very hard to be like them, to fit in, but in a way that almost seems like making fun of them until she realizes it. She realizes that this identity shift isn't necessary as she comes to terms with being around these rural white people. There's no need to not be herself, but where did this fear or need come from? How do people have to pretend to be like the whites out of a need for safety?
-Positioned as a sort of coming-of-age novel for Piri
-Throughout the novel, he comes to term with his blackness and the anti-Black racism and colorism within not only the community around him but within his own family, too
-Deals with his sexuality and masculinity too, as he feels the need to prove himself in the streets, while also later seeing the need to get out
-This book creates space for an Indigenous narrative in poetry, exploring love and sexuality in a decolonial lens
-She intertwines Native ideology and symbolism throughout her poetry, subtly creating space for it when it isn't given such
-She also portrays the atrocities done and still happening against Natives throughout the poem. The long poem "exhibits from The American Water Museum" especially does this. The usage of museum itself calls to the way Natives are pushed to the past, rather than celebrated in the present. And it explicitly details atrocities done to Natives via water, even though water is extremely important in most native cultures.
-Celebrates the Nuyorican, a "new generation" of people who found culture away from the island
-Also highlights Puerto Rican-American celebrations of the mix of cultures
-This is their place- in the inbetween. And he portrays this inbetween culture as beautiful because that is who they are
-"weave us a song of many threads" the second line, already nodding the many cultures within them.
-This poem brings to light the mix of cultures within Puerto Ricans, particularly Puerto Ricans in the US. Within them is both the colonizer and the colonized, an experience of violence and the perpetration of it. This is their blanket that has been woven- the indigenous, the Black, the colonizer experience. The experience of this mix, and this experience in a neo-colonial context.
-This poem positions an obituary for average Nuyoricans, detailing their life
-He describes them as hard workers, people in a society not made for them through the usage of careers like janitors and the idea of the newspapers "misspelling, mispronouncing, and misunderstanding" their names even after death. It's another, final, little scorn from people outside the community
-There is also some comedy etched into the poem, emphasizing the importance of their own community and the sense of belonging it creates.
Yo Soy Joaquín” (1967)-Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez
-Grapples with and finds a way to articulate and ground Chicano identity
-"I was both tyrant and slave" nods to this blended and complex heritage.
-Calls back for the need for their land- the land is theirs. It is the land their ancestors were both murdered on and murdered on. Their blood is in the land, and the land is in them.
-Emphasizes this complicated history as a core part of the Chicano identity in an attempt to make space for the hard conversations and reality that exist within them.
-Sets out a course of action for a Nuyorican group alongside their core beliefs
-Unique in that it advocates for solidarity amongst not only all Latinx people but all people experiencing oppression; it is just centrally for Puerto Ricans
-Outwardly defies racism and sexism within the Latinx community
-The major plan of the Chicano movement
-Calls back to indigeneity through its name
-Chicano nationalist movement; calling towards solely Mexican-Americans
-Portrays the school walkouts, a protest of the Chicano movement
-Portrays the importance of children in social movements and direct acts of protest
-Also portrays complicated identity within the movement
-Outwardly talking about white privilege to white students in the deep south
-Listens to a white kid who wants to resist these notions, but she also has to stand her ground to white students who are crying and yelling at her
-Speaking about white privilege in this setting is an act of resistance, as they may need to hear it most.
