cultural refiguring in literature, oral history, and art
- Categories
- Book/Boek
- Creator
- Blake, Debra
- Publish Year
- 2008
- Shelfmark
- LAT 3 2008
- Thesaurus
- latina's, schrijvers, seksualiteit, sociale klasse, etniciteit, spiritualiteit, geweld, feminisme
- Description
- 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, 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. Blake gathered oral histories from working-class and semiprofessional U.S. Mexicana women. 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.