Coming of age is difficult for any person regardless of age, sex, race etc. In this film, Ana is dealing with all three of these matrices. As compared to her sister and her mother she is obviously the youngest woman in the house. She is the most agile and able to help the family. Her mother’s first line in the film is asking Ana to make breakfast for the family. Carmen, her mother, later makes her work for Estela so that she can help financially. Carmen began working when she was thirteen so she figured Ana was over due for that responsibility. Ana eventually defies her mother’s wishes to work straight out of high school by defining her own coming of age moment in attending Columbia.
Race is the context for which the entire film is based upon. Being Mexican American or Chicana is difficult for Ana. She must reconcile her two cultures in herself without becoming the outcast in either. At school she attempts to fit in by lying about a post graduation adventure to Europe. At home she must suppress who she is in order to make her mother happy. Carmen is the embodiment of traditional Mexican womanhood. She enforces female stereotypes on her daughters when she calls them fat or tells them that no one cares about their thoughts. The Mexican machismo culture which Carman associates with is a form of oppression which Ana refuses to subscribe to.
Though Ana is 18, a very fertile age, her mother neglects her sexual maturity. She is either to stay a virgin or find a man and get pregnant. Ana develops her own sexual identity which she shapes in direat contrast to her mother. Ana believes that a woman is more than her body. This is also evident in her choosing to attend university. Ana’s sexual coming of age is made very obvious to us in the film. She loses her virginity to her boyfriend whom she seems to only have dated for a short time. Before they have sex Ana turns the light on so he can see her as she really is. The next day we see Ana admiring her own body in the mirror finally accepting her curves and coming in to herself as the woman she wants to be.
I really like what you say in regards to whats going on in eveyday life for women, and what the movie was showing. I agree that in this movie the women was alway put in the back burner when it came to her advancing in life or wanting something bettter. But traditions and values that the mother has clashes with Ana’s views in what she wants in life. I feel that Ana wanting to attend Columbia is her way of breaking the chains of the values that her mother has, and the plans she has with her wanting to marry and take care of a man.