Week of 17 February: The Hungry Woman

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For this week we’re going to be reading Cherríe Moraga’s play The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea, Moraga’s take on the La Llorona story. The play is short, but please be sure to read the introductory notes. Also, because this is a play and meant to be performed rather than read, you likely will need to read it over a couple of times. You also should read “The Gothic Gift of Death in Cherríe Moraga’s The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea” by Tanya Gonzalez. Gonzalez is one of the first scholars to talk about the gothic in conjunction with Chicano/a literature.

Come to class Monday knowing the legends of La Llorona and Medea.

Don’t forget your blogging assignments and to tweet your reading and questioning of the play.

Added 2/17/2014 Here’s an essay, “Looking for the Insatiable Woman“, that Moraga wrote on her writing process / thinking behind The Hungry Woman.

Las Curanderas: Traditional Healers in New Mexico

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Painting by Ricardo Ortega

Courtesy of aztecreations.net

 http://www.motherearthliving.com/health-and-wellness/new-mexico-shealing-tradition.aspx?PageId=5#ArticleContent

I found the above article about a ninety one year old curandera named Gabrielita.  According to this article, there are three main categories of curanderas: yerbera (herbalist) and continuing with the partera(midwife), sobadora (folk chiropractor), and curandera espiritual (spiritual healer), who uses prayer and ritual and is the least common of the curanderas (Arellano, 1997).

In the context of this article, curanderos are closer to what some people might consider a homeopathic practitioner Gabriela believes that her gifts come from God and she is devoutly religious. She prays to God that the herbs she picks  will help her patient.  The article describes one of her  harvesting methods this way:  “She began her harvest on August 12 of each year, as did her grandmother and other curanderas, who attended mass on that date and sometimes walked in a procession with the saints, praying that God would bless the herbs before picking. ‘There is a religious, spiritual  connection to this day,’ Gabrielita says. ­‘August 12 is the day of the Blessed Virgin, or so the old ones said’” (Arellano, 1997).

She resembles Ultima in this way, such as when in the movie, she tells Antonio to speak to each herb as they pick them. Unlike Ultima, Gabriela is not making wax dolls of those who have cursed her family.

Works Cited

Arellano, A. (1997, March/April). Las Curanderas: Traditional Healers in New Mexico. Retrieved from Mother Earth Living: Natural Home, Healthy Life: http://www.motherearthliving.com/health-and-wellness/new-mexico-shealing-tradition.aspx?PageId=5#ArticleContent

 

Video

Interview with Rudolfo Anaya

I found this short interview with Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless Me, Ultima, very interesting; it reveals many of the traits of Anaya’s childhood and personality that influenced the novel beyond his “culture, traditions, and history”.  He came from a background of oral storytelling, which I believe greatly influences Bless Me, Ultima. The nature of Antonio’s remembrances of Ultima feel like the stuff of legends passed orally from generation to generation, retaining the air of myth while being presented in a first person narrative. 

Similar to Antonio not being exposed to the English Language until he went to school, Anaya was not introduced to the “magic of words” until entering school, for he had no books at home. Once he began to read, he became immersed in mystery novels featuring young protagonists, such as The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.

 I believe the content of these novels also influenced his story. Like Bless Me, Ultima, Nancy and the boys are children thrust into mysterious situations and forced to make conclusive decisions through reasoning. Though Antonio is not out to solve a mystery, he is grappling with very mysterious things such as religion, destiny, and magic, and must make up his mind about what it all means. The darkness of mystery novels could have also been an influence on the gothic nature of Bless Me, Ultima,  as both genres incorporate the unknown, the grittiness of life, and a sort of “spookiness.”

Anaya also states that Antonio is a version of his childhood self and that they share many similarities. I immediately remembered Antonio’s introspective nature and eloquent detailing of his life and thought that he would make a wonderful writer as well. Then, near the end of the interview, Anaya suggests that the novel was meant to have an open ending so that the reader could guess what Antonio chose to be; he then quipped, “Maybe he became a writer!”

Concepcion and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

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In, Calligraphy of the Witch, Concepcion talks a lot about her “madre” who turns out to be Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Many may not have known who Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was prior to reading the book. In order to have an idea of where Concepcion is coming from, it is important to know who Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz is.  Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz is one of Mexico’s finest writers. She is considered a feminist and many believe that she was ahead of her time. Sor Juana was a very intelligent woman and she loved reading. In her time however, it was rare for women to be scholars; the only way for her to be able to keep reading and writing was to enter the convent and become a nun. Although Sor Juana was very critical towards men, she didn’t get so much in trouble because of this. In fact, like Concepcion, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz faced problems and contreversies because of religion. In her writing, Sor Juana attacked many of the clergy in the church. She was threatened and had to stop writing.

I found a website which has many of Sor Juana’s poems. Reading her poetry might be helpful in making connections and understanding Concepcion’s points of view a bit better.  The link is to the poem which Concepcion always thought about.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/you-men/

The Biography of Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz. “The Biography of Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz.”Poemhunter.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2014.

http://www.poemhunter.com/sor-juana-ines-de-la-cruz/biography/

 

 

Sympathetic Magic.

In many communities, it is an often observed maxim that children are better off with shallow truths than definitive, stark ones. Often, adults believe the naïve livelihood of children to necessitate the invocation of white lies, or even myths, to explain the complexity—or soften the harshness—of our world. There are enumerable examples of this in daily life, whether be it Santa Claus, or God, appeals to the fantastical or supernatural, embellish reality so that a child may be reared prescriptively. In life, however, the stories we tell have a way of telling us a great deal about ourselves. So, for Rodulfo Anayas, it is not only a genre conceit to add folklore and mythological elements into his storytelling, but rather, particularly in “Bless Me, Ultima,” perhaps the coming of age story of an immigrant boy would be incomplete without them. “One of the most typical features of Anaya’s fiction,” begins Dr. Hasine Şen of Istanbul University, “[is] his extensive use of myth” (Şen 166). In this employment of ‘magicalism’ and realism, Anaya does not seek to simply pit to worlds at odds, but rather to reconcile both as essential to each other in the setting of the narrative. “To put it another way, the modernity of the magical realist novel manifests itself in the implicit acknowledgment that there is such a thing as a coherent, interdependent, and recognizable modern world that is inescapable, that such a world is the only one with a historical future, the only real one that can any longer be represented” (Moses 106). In authoring an account of Antonio as a young boy of both Mexican and Spanish descent, there is at once an internal conflict of ethnicity at play, as well as the exterior conflict of reconciling the mythical folklore of his mother’s heritage with the pragmatic modernity of his father’s ambition.

Chicano scholar Gloria Anzaldua has called the borderland between the United States of America and Mexico, where many, like her, make their displaced home, “a 1,950 mile-long open wound” of barbed wire and desert boundary. Anzaldua explains that the border serves not only to physically divide people but to metaphorically afflict them with prejudice toward each other. “Many Chicano writers,” writes Şen, “have based their works on the multifaceted problems of the borderland – the central issue of migration, the life in the barrio, the conflict with Anglo culture, the search for a genuine Chicano identity – to describe the difficulties of coping with life in this indeterminate space” (Şen 167). Anaya writes “Bless Me, Ultima” during a time of Mexican-American turmoil guaranteed by the fallout of both country’s forefathers. The term “Chicano” rose to a partisan prominence as the political nomenclature of Mexican-Americans. These Mexican-Americans were often second generation individuals, the children of immigrant parents yet lamenting their native culture. “By integrating myths and legends into his narrative,” writes Şen, “[Anaya] aims to revive the collective unconscious of the Chicano people” (Şen 167). The Chicano identity specifically takes up arms with the sheer invocation of magical realism, because it is a call to reclaim the Mexican identity as inextricably bound to that of Aztlan.

There is much mysticism still pervading the telltales of Aztec civilization. Even among Mexican-Americans, there remains a lot of mystification of the Aztecs as significantly less cunning than their Spanish conquerors. Historical accounts dispute the Aztecs as caricaturized as peaceful, non-warring natives. The significance of the myth is not erect idols, but rather, in “Bless Me, Ultima,” for Anaya, it is to represent a metaphorical and spiritual kinship with Antonio’s, the protagonist, cultural origins. The character of Ultima an old curandera, “a woman who knew the herbs and remedies of the ancients, a miracle-worker who could heal the sick” acts as both a stand-in for a mythological and mythical culture of a land Antonio may never truly know (Anaya 5). Antonio may never know his father or mother’s homeland like they have, but in keeping with certain traditions and understanding the role of Ultima in his life and the community at large, Antonio too preserves his native culture in practice and observation of Ultima’s folk-healing. In keeping with the cuentos, Antonio is keeping with what Anaya cultivates as a new mestizo identity in the New World, one distinctly Chicano.

Şen, Hasine.Mythic Visions of the Borderland: Rodolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima.” Journal of Arts and Sciences Sayı. 12 Apr. 2009. Web.


Moses, Michael. “Magical Realism at World’s End.” Oxford Journals. 2001. Web. http://litimag.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/1/105.full.pdf

 

The Chicano Dilemma: Antonio and the Borderlands

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In Bless Me, Ultima there is ongoing conflict within the Márez-Luna family in regards to their diverse histories, beliefs, customs, and lifestyles. These varied backgrounds that exist between the patriarch, Gabriel Márez, and his wife, María Luna, not only creates tension in their relationship and home life, but also produces confusion for their children. The Márezes come from the conquistadores across the sea and roam the llano on horses, living a life full of freedom.  The Lunas live a quiet, deeply-rooted, stable farming life in El Puerto and value spirituality. In the Márez-Luna household the two lineages are often pit against each other, the characteristics of one of the bloodlines is usually praised while the other is criticized. Antonio and the other Márez-Luna children are a hybrid of the two lineages, being from both, yet not fully belonging to either. This idea can be described as the “third space” or the “consciousness of the Borderlands” as theorized by the late scholar, Gloria Anzaldúa. She writes that when one is mixed, or is a mestizaje of races/cultures, their “chromosomes [are] constantly “‘crossing over’” (99). As this is displayed with Antonio and his family, this is representative of the Chicano experience: being of mixed indigenous and Spanish ancestry and being from both sides of the border, not fully belonging to either racial group or on either side of the border.

In the Márez-Luna family, the older sons have the behavioral traits of their Márez lineage and Antonio’s personality has more of a resemblance to the Luna side. He is expected to follow their path of being a priest and farmer. His mother and her family see him as their “last hope” since the eldest sons took a different road. His father prefers the ways of his own people. Antonio witnesses his parents’ disagreements and is sent mixed messages from the two. Antonio’s “mental nepantilism” (nepantla is an Aztec/Nahautl word meaning torn between ways) (100)  more fully comes to the surface when he begins to question the power of the Catholic/Christian God. His dying uncle Lucas is healed by Ultima’s powers, while the priest was unable to cure him. The conflict between Catholicism/Christianity and “paganism” exists, as they are contradictory beliefs and he is not supposed to believe in both of them. This heightens after he sees the golden carp. How can he believe in both the Almighty and in the golden carp, how can Catholicism/Christianity and indigenous beliefs coincide with each other? This too, has historically been an issue for Chicanos’ indigenous ancestors after the Spanish conquest, and then again in the United States where Catholicism was demonized and Protestantism was revered.

While the Márez-Lopez family is divided with their family backgrounds and what they see as being the best way of life, the wise curandera, Ultima, encourages the unity of the two different cultures. She prays to the Virgin Guadalupe, attends mass, and  follows indigenous ways of healing. When searching for herbs and roots with Antonio, she teaches him about both sides of his family histories and incorporates both indigenous and Moorish/Spanish healing herbs.  The concept of mestizaje is described in Antonio’s dream, when his parents are disputing about the significance of the waters and their own bloodlines. Ultima encourages the melding of the two different lineages when she tells them,

“You both know…that the sweet water of the moon which falls as rain in the same water that fathers into rivers and flows to fill the seas. Without the waters of the moon to replenish the oceans there would be no oceans. And the same salt waters of the oceans are drawn by the suns to the heavens, and in turn become again the waters of the moon. Without the sun there would no waters formed to slake the dark earth’s thirst.

The waters are one, Antonio. I looked into her bright clear eyes and understood her truth.

You have been seeing only parts, she finished, and not looking beyond into the great cycle that binds us all” (Anaya 121).

Ultima is reminding them that both sides need each other. Bringing the two together will only make Antonio stronger. He should not have to choose one or the other, but embrace both. Later in the novel as Antonio’s father is taking him to El Puerto to spend the summer with the Lunas, his father discusses how maybe it is time for he and his wife to give up on their differences. Antonio states, “Then maybe I don’t have to be just Márez, or Luna, perhaps I can be both…Take the llano and the river valley, the moon and the sea, God and the golden carp—and make something new” (247). While Antonio is both Luna and Márez: both Spanish and indigenous, he is also not fully either one. By embracing the mestizaje he is creating the third space, “something new.” As with Chicanos who have historically experienced the third space as mestizos in Mexico, and then again in the United States as being Mexican-American (once again, never fully belonging to either side), Antonio can “continually walk out of one culture/and into another,/because [he is] in all cultures at the same time” (Anzaldúa 99). Antonio is trying to work through his sense of nepantla and not feel torn about who he is. He is from both the moon and lake and sun and sea.

Written at the time of the Chicano Movement, Anaya’s depiction of this Chicano family accurately displays the issues and struggles that Chicanos face in regards to their mixed racial, spiritual, linguistic, and geographical histories and experiences within the United States. Just as Antonio had to straddle the concepts of being from the sun and sea and the moon and lake, and what that meant, Chicanos struggle with the Borderlands consciousness of their sense of belonging and identity.

 

(Desert Border Image Credit: http://blogs.cofc.edu)

Works Cited:

Anaya, Rudolpho. Bless Me, Ultima. New York: Warner Books, 1972. Print.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2012. Print.

 

Eden and Ignorance in “Bless Me, Ultima”

In the Christian Bible, Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden for the crime of disobeying God. The way they do this of course, is by eating from the Fruit of Forbidden Knowledge. When they do so, they gain knowledge of much of the world, such as the shame of being naked. Because of this, it can be argued that Adam and Eve are therefore banished because they broke their ignorance. This then begs the question, is ignorance bliss, and is it a more desirable state of being?

In Bless Me, Ultima, the main character Antonio is in a constant dangerous state of breaking through his ignorance. While Antonio is only a six year old boy, he is constantly questioning the world around him, which leads him into the precipitous situation of learning too much before the appointed time. For instance, Antonio is constantly forced to contemplate the various religious influences surrounding him and which religion he should follow. Antonio sees the Christian influence of his family and the ways in which it governs the world, especially in the lives of the townspeople and the ways that their beliefs influence their behavior. However, Antonio also sees the power of the pagan world through the golden carp, as well the power of Ultima.

Ultima then can be analyzed as a possible allusion to the snake that tempts Eve and Adam into sin. While I would argue that Ultima and the knowledge she brings are not inherently negative, as the snake is portrayed in the Bible, she can still be noted as a figure that tempts Antonio away from the message of Christianity and to turn towards new religious endeavors. Antonio even notes at one point that he notices power in Ultima when he hugs her, but he is unsure of whether this power, which resembles a whirlwind, is positive or negative.

In this way, one must ask whether it is better to remain in ignorance, or move into knowledge. On one hand, one can note that Antonio is stripped of his innocence far too soon. Even though he is a six year old boy, he is forced to contemplate a religious existence that most men do not face until well into college years. On the other hand, one can state that it is because of this strive for knowledge that Antonio is able to function as such a precocious boy. In addition, because of this search for truth, Antonio will be able to function as a much more effective adult.

Bless Me, Ultima therefore explores what it means to be in ignorance and in knowledge, and the struggle to change from this ignorance.

Works Cited:
Anaya, Rudolpho. Bless Me, Ultima. New York: Warner Books, 1972.

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A Criticism on Faith: Is Faith Constructive or Destructive?

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Within Bless Me, Ultima, the emphasis upon religious faith and Catholicism is a central theme throughout the book. Antonio’s mother is constantly praying, conducting rituals, and expressing her welcoming of Antonio’s religious upbringing. Antonio, being brought up with his mother, sees and cherishes this faith, as he too begins to practice and harness the spirit of God. However pleasant this may seem at first, the novel addresses major shortcomings and unanswered questions with regards to Catholicism and theology in general. We see strong criticism from Florence, Tony’s friend who unfortunately and ironically drowns. Investigating pages 196-199, Florence raises questions as to the vast amount of inequality, injustice, and social hardships. On page 196, Florence asks, “how can God let this happen to a kid, I never asked to be born. But he gives me birth, a soul, and puts me here to punish me. Why? What did I ever do to Him?” Antonio then thinks to himself, “For a moment I couldn’t answer. The questions Florence posed were the same ones I wanted answered. Why was the murder of Narciso allowed? Why does evil exist?” (196).

Through this dialogue, we see Antonio’s reluctance to fully submerge himself within his faith. Like Florence, Antonio has substantial reservations about Catholicism and the credibility of God. With the illnesses, the deaths, the tribulations within his community, Tony begins to seriously question his devotion with his faith. Florence is the character who ‘materializes’ Tony’s thoughts… by this, I am talking about how these questions lingered within Tony, but it was Florence who was the one who actually brought them into their conversation. The dauntingly large and seemingly impossible task of ascertaining the reasons behind human suffering and evil is what leaves Tony nearly dumbfounded.

Later in the novel, we see more reservations about Tony’s faith in Catholicism. On page 222, Tony states, “After Easter I went to confession every Saturday and on Sunday morning I went to communion, but I was not satisfied. The God I so eagerly sought was not there.” These unanswered questions have a profound affect upon Tony and his beliefs; and is a substantial turning point of the novel. This is where Tony begins to question what he has been taught, thus constructing a more individualized and intellectual world-view. It is the maturity of Tony that we see through this religious criticism and investigation. As we have discussed the novel being that of a ‘coming of age’ story, here we see this motif in action: we see Tony growing, maturing, and becoming more cognizant of discrepancies between reality and spirituality. Is Tony’s doubtfulness of Catholicism constructive for his maturity? Or is it detrimental due to its destruction of his faith? Regarding the former, the critical analysis and questioning may be seen as imperative for intellectual development and advancement… Questioning and criticizing is how we get to truth, and truth is what leads to knowledge, right? On the other hand, nearly everything Tony has learned about faith comes crashing down — it seems to all be an illusion; some fabricated story that is supposed to bring comfort. What do you think?

 

Image credit: www.catholic-kids.com

Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1972. Print.

 

 

Antonio and The Aztecs. What Do They Have in Common?

In addition to this Chicano Gothic class, I am currently enrolled in a Latino Religion and Spirituality class as well as a History of Latin America Class that focuses specifically on the Aztec’s to Spanish Conquest. While reading  “Bless Me Ultima” by Rudolfo Anaya I couldn’t help but draw conclusions between the novel, specifically Antonio’s struggle to find an identity and what I was learning about in my other classes, that being the struggle of the Indigenous people of Mexico, the Mexica, after the arrival of the Spanish and their struggle to reformulate their identity. I was able to find an article in which the author draws a similar conclusion. In this article the author writes “the significance of the golden carp in Aztec myth based in the creation stories in the time predating the various ages of human in-habitation” (Hunt 189). I found the correlation between Antonio’s struggle to find an Identity and the struggle of the indigenous relatable because Antonio is struggling to find a religion from the religions present in his life, The ancient religion of Ultima, the currandera, the worship of the Land that his father seems to possess because it is in the open spaces of the llano on his horse that Antonio’s father seems to find peace, and finally there is Catholicism that his mother thrust upon him. This struggle is shared between Antonio and the indigenousness people of Mexico. In a book I read for another class this semester, titled “Christianity of Latin America: A History” the authors comment on the way the conquerors used “metaphors and images familiar in the Americas… as tools for introducing “new” Old World (European) ideas”(Gonzalez 55). But even when this mixing of cultures was attempted there were still levels of resistance. Even when the indigenous did accept the religion of the Europeans, they tended to envision these saints and other important figures in their own image, “under the pretense of devotion to a new Christian image, indigenous peoples continued old religious practices” (Gonzalez 59). Given this little bit of research I have already conducted, could the argument be made that Antonio is representative of the indigenous people and their shared struggle was a commentary made by Anaya as a way of constructing a social criticism on the thrusting upon of Old World religion of the Europeans?

 

Works Cited:

Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1972. Print.

González, Ondina E., and Justo L. González. Christianity in Latin America: A History.                 Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. Print.

Hunt, Alex. “In Search of Anaya’s Carp: Mapping Ecological Consciousness and Chicano             Myth.” Classics in Envornmental Literature (n.d.): 179-206. Web. <http://www.academia.edu/806361/In_Search_of_Anayas_Carp_Mapping_Ecological_Consciousness_and_Chicano_Myth>.

Ultima: Witch or Curandera?

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It’s difficult to determine whether Ultima is a witch or a curandera. This is because the answer depends on the definition that one gives for each term and the definitions are very similar. According to an article I found online a curandera is a broader term for Curanderismo, which “includes four specialties, beginning with the yerbera (herbalist) and continuing with the partera (midwife), sobadora (folk chiropractor), and curandera espiritual (spiritual healer), who uses prayer and ritual and is the least common of the curanderas. Some practitioners have specialized in only one area, but all have made some use of herbal remedios (remedies). Whatever the practice, most people refer to all of these folk healers as curanderas. Some men have also practiced as curanderos, sobadores, or spiritual healers, but traditionally these roles have been reserved for women.” This term can easily be applied to Ultima. This is seen in the novel when she uses herbal remedies to help Antonio sleep after his nightmare or when she cures his uncle Lucas.

The definition of a witch also coincides with Ultima. I found an article that lists three different definitions of a witch. These include, “someone who practices some form of magic”, “someone who has and uses unusual psychic talents”, and “someone who honors or worships the Old Gods.” All these things can also be said of Ultima. Her ability to cure can be seen as magic, she always seems to know what is happening without being told, and although it is never stated that she worships the golden carp, she does have knowledge of the story.

After reading through these definitions I think that Ultima can be considered both a witch and a curandera. However, the term witch is usually used in a negative manner causing us to not associate it with Ultima since she is perceived as good. The term can also be used in a positive manner, and when used in this way I think it can be used to describe Ultima. According to Ultima’s own culture and beliefs, however, she is a curandera. Although others may perceive her as a witch, she will always identify herself as a curandera and I think those closest to her would do the same.

Works Cited:
http://www.motherearthliving.com/health-and-wellness/new-mexico-shealing-tradition.aspx?PageId=2 Arellano F, Anselmo. “Las Curanderas: Traditional Healers in New Mexico”. Mother Earth Living. 1997. Web. 9 Feb.,2014.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/aidankelly/2012/07/what-is-a-witch/ Kelly, Aidan. “What is a Witch?” Patheos. 2012. Web. 9 Feb.,2014.

image credit: Carmenlomasgarza.com