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Latinx Literature - Coggle Diagram

- - - - -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.
      - "Marriage could hardly be like the passionate romances one read about in books. It seemed to her, in fact, a rotten deal. Men would be solicitous and well behaved when they courted a woman, asking her out to parties and sending her flowers, but once they married, the flowers wilted."
  - - - “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)
      - There is also an emphasis on names and language, such as in the scene where Yolanda's name is pondered, and how this impacts the girls as they grow older.
  - - - How do people within communities limit or criticize their own women? Her two major examples are major criticisms against Nicki Minaj in her early career for being hyperfeminine and The Chonga Girls. She contrasts Nicki's Barbie Girl aesthetic and its reception to how white women are perceived in that aesthetic, and she contrasts The Chonga Girls' parodies of Chongas to the art and embodiment of actual Chongas.
      - Art is the major focus, as it ties into aesthetics. The way we view art is tied to the artist's identity. She mainly focuses on and 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
      - 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 and Pachuca 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.
  - - - 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.
      - The cause of the fading is still vague, and it's important to note that men aren't directly called out in this story. The two male characters are gross, frat-boy types. But this story shows how misogyny is also perpetuated by and serves to benefit some women.
  - - - "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)
      - Her analysis and perspective is especially important as a butch lesbian. Queer performative identity plays a large role in both the Gay and Chicano movements she is criticizing, and it plays a huge role in why she has to criticize them in the first place. It also ties into her criticism of the Women's Movement.
  - - - 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. Stories of the body, of sex, of culture, are all told through the eyes of the panza.
- - - - 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.
      - Explicitly anti-war and anti-capitalist, tying in not only how these issues affect Puerto Ricans both in PR and in the US but also how it affects everyone under White Supremacy.
      - Outwardly defies racism and sexism within the Latinx community- "down with machismo"
  - - - Chicano nationalist movement; calling towards solely Mexican-Americans. Though Mexican-American and Chicano are not the same thing. Chicano is a very specific identity, and El Plan helps emphasize this.
      - Calls back to indigeneity through its name- Aztlán is the birthplace of the Aztec people. The name Aztec, or Aztecah in Nahuatl, means "people from Aztlán." This call back to indigeneity reinforces that Chicanos have been on that land longer and fights against white supremacist colonialism.
  - - - Portrays the importance of children in social movements and direct acts of protest. Oftentimes, kids are not allowed to participate or are underestimated in times of social action. This is even showed in the movie. However, the kids walking out of schools to protest the conditions they are put under is monumental in changing things for the community as a whole.
      - Also portrays complicated identity within the movement
      - Language is important both in the movie and in the walkouts historically, as children could be punished for speaking Spanish. This was part of efforts to assimilate and white wash students.
  - - - She presents different student reactions- asking questions on how to help, crying, and yelling- as a way to show the importance of being uncomfortable. It also demonstrates the exact privilege she is talking about.
      - Speaking about white privilege in this setting is an act of resistance, as they need to hear it most. She also knew she would receive backlash and did it anyways because of how important this was to her.
      - “If you do consider yourself white and don’t feel like that girl, are you not yet uncomfortable because, despite this being about your people, you don’t think it’s about your people? Because, as a white person, you’ve gotten to be just you your entire life?” (166)
- - - - -"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 both murdered on and were 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.
  - - - 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
      - "the world of home, the world of school (no more of that, though), and the world of street. The street was the best damn one. It was like all the guys shouting out, 'Hey, man, this is our kick." (114)
  - - - 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.
  - - - “AmeRícan” (1985)- Tato Laviera
        
        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
      - “Blanket Weaver” (1975)-Sandra María Esteves
        
        "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.
      - “Puerto Rican Obituary” (1973)- Pedro Pietri
        
        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.
- - - - 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 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
      - "That is the pact between immigrants and their children in America: they give us a better life, and we spend the rest of that life figuring out how much of our flesh will pay off the debt. "
  - - - 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 place