Reading assignment for Monday, September 17. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. You do not need to answer these specific questions, but response should demonstrate you’ve done the reading and thought about the text.
Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.
What parts of Moraga’s book read as a coming-of-age story? How does coming of age relate to Chicana identity? To her identity as a lesbian?
What is Moraga’s relationship to her father? To her mother? How do those relationships shape her development?
What are some of the “vendidas” Moraga owns? Do you see it relating to her connection with various movements’ politics?
(Note: Class will meet in VDA 040.)
Moranga’s literature is soaked with life experiences as a bi-cultural woman and as a lesbian. We read that she knew she was lesbian at an early age. What she did not realize at that time was her cultural identity to its fullness. She related more to her mother as she was helping her with English translations, as many first generation citizens do with parents who do not speak English. I can say this about myself. As a first generation to a woman who was an illegal in this country, my life experience was similar to Moranga’s.
We read on page 59, that Moranga was aware of a privilege. “I was la Guerra- fair skinned. Born with the features of my Chicana mother, but the skin of my Anglo father, I had it made.” We can see here that Moranga was aware of her “white” privilege and of her education. She was expecting her life would be much easy than her mothers’. She did not realize that her life as a lesbian will bring her hardship as we read in “Pesadilla”. Here we read that she found it very difficult at times to continue being a lesbian.
Moranga believed that her fair skin and education was all she needed to succeed. However, when she wrote about the Jews, which were some sort of white with long last names, she realized that being white was not a shield against oppression. It was a realization that she was not safe. At the end of the novel, Moranga comes to terms with her sexuality and her “racial” identity. She comes to realize that she is a Mexican woman and that her life revolves around Mexican tradition. The tradition her mother gave her.
“Feed the Mexican Back into Her” on page 146, is touching. She was encouraging others to be who they are and not try to change their identity to fit the “white” world. Even is one wants to speak the white words, they are coming out of a colored individual. “It is the fire you see coming out from inside me…darkness you still wear…the light you reach for across the table and into my heart”.
I think the entirely of the book is about Moraga’s coming of age. Some parts of her writing are more explicit and she directly makes note that some situation or experience helped to shape her worldview, or there will be a poem where she alludes to a certain idea. Her coming of age occurs through her trying to find her sexual and cultural identities. I see most of the book as this tool for trying to pinpoint these identities, Chicana and lesbian, that she wants to embrace.
Compared to House on Mango Street, I think Moraga has a more complex coming of age. Hers isn’t just about sexual identity, it is also wrapped up in culture and ethnicity and that makes her far more complicated. Many times through the book she writes about trying to pinpoint what it means to be a Chicana. There are all sorts of political, cultural, and social connotations tied up in using that title. Just for that reason alone it would seem, to me anyways, that using the title of Chicana would be a bit dangerous. I want to say that Moraga feels that way, since she does refer to herself as half breed, but I don’t necessarily want to put words into her mouth. But she definitely makes it a point to show that calling herself Chicana was not something she had the privilege to do right away, she had to work her way up to it. That seems to be a big part of her coming of age to me.
Morgaga’s relationship with her father is strictly genetic. She only shares the same white skin as her father, which Moraga tends to embrace and dread through different moments in the text. The only thing they seem to have in common is that they are both gay. He fails at his role of being a father and husband. when Moraga’s mother was in the hospital she tells her, “I knew I had to live, I knew he could never take care of you children.” (85) Moraga is very close to her mother. This very close relationship ties strongly to her embracing being a chicana. “To be a woman fully necessitated my claiming the race of my mother. My brother’s sex was white. Mine, brown.” (86) Moraga’s Lesbian urges to handle a woman while dancing come from her remembering how her dad would awkwardly hold her mother. “A real man , when he dances with you, you’ll know he’s a ral man by how he holds you in he back.” (25) As Moraga would dance with she would remember her mother, ” I am my mother’s lover. the partner she’s been waiting for. I can handle whatever you got hidden. I can provide for you. (26) Moraga’s relationship with her mother plays a very important role in her being a strong chicana and a lesbian woman.
A moment where this is a coming of age novel is when she is serving her brother and his friends. After being busy with all of her own obligations she would still have to get drinks for her brother and his friends. in addition, Moraga would clean his room, iron his clothes and give him her hard earned money so he could blow it on his dates. She recalls her brother saying he never felt deprived. “Of course, he didn’t. He grew up male in our house. He had the best of both worlds.” “male in a man’s world. Light-skinned in a white world.”
Moraga does not pin her coming-of-age to one precise moment. As readers, she helps us understand that coming-of-age can be defined in more ways than one, and that it is something transitional that develops in time.
Moraga discusses her stance at a crossroad, a crossroad between identity and culture. She identifies as woman > a queer woman > a queer woman of color – she has three systems of oppression working against her, and this novel is the avenue through which she attempts to come to terms with them. She understands that she’s growing up in the white man’s world. If she has ever felt discriminated against, is it because she’s queer or is it because she’s of color? I think we really peer into Moraga’s thoughts in “La Guera” – Here, she acknowledges that her fair skin has granted her privilege – thus, it becomes clearer that she better identifies as queer.