Real women do have curves-revised

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Real Women Have Curves is a very uplifting video. As a dark complexed woman, I have had my share of insecurities.  My siblings, not very light brown themselves, would mock me about my color.  They would call me burnt charcoal, brownie and darkie. I felt different. I felt as if I was not part of them; like an addition. Not having my father around or knowing who he was solidified my belief that I was a half sibling. Even a couple of my mother’s brothers said I was different a few times. That only made we wonder more. I disliked my skin color, which was similar to my grandfather’s, who was tall, dark and had lovely green eyes that I wished I would have inherited.

My grandfather’s grandfather was an Afro-Mexican, also tall, fair skinned with blue eyes. I would give so much to meet that man.  When I was told about this story, I had an awakening.  For many years I felt disconnected from my family and that one story united me to them. From all my cousins in Mexico, I seem to be the darkest, even though we all come in different shades. My cousin in Tijuana could pass for Anglo if she would die her hair blonde, this is how much we vary. Having information of oneself changes our perspective, as did the story of my great great grandfather.

Real Woman Have Curves is a great film because it relays the message of acceptance of who one is. Anna did not connect sex to her complete self, that was only part of who she was as a woman. By knowing that, she was able to look beyond her prescribed role by society as a Mexican woman. Having information about my history gave me confidence, because now I know where I got certain features from and with this confidence, I realize that I have more to offer than just a interesting look.

To accept one self as is, is the best coming of age experience.  We learn to love ourselves as who we are.  Not being a size zero, blond or blue eyed does not make me any less.  Being brown does not make me less valuable either.  Real Women Have Curves sends out a message to all women to accept themselves.  Once I accepted the dark complexion I have, I liberated my self from the critiques and unhappiness I experienced because I was seen as lesser than.  I found a freedom.

The Symbolism of Identity in Cherrie Moraga’s Poetry

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A major aspect of coming of age is establishing and understanding identity. In her poem, “For the Color of My Mother,” Cherrie Moraga comes to an understanding of both her identity and her mother’s through descriptions of faces.  In the lines, “at two / my upper lip split open /…the gash sewn back into a snarl / would last for years,”  Moraga describes a traumatic childhood event that literally scarred her face but also changed the way she looked and the way she thought of herself. By mentioning a memory from such a young age, she shows that she never forget the scar and that it affected her profoundly. She also describes her mother’s mouth and how it was an integral part of her roles as mother and breadwinner. When Cherrie is 5, she observes: “her mouth, pressed into mouthing English / mouthing yes yes yes / mouthing stoop lift carry / (sweating wet sighs into the field”. The sighs that come from her mother’s mouth represent the straining physical labor her mother had to do as a minority who didn’t speak very much English and needed to support her family. These roles all come together to create the mother’s identity, and by observing them, Cherrie is coming to an understanding of who her mother is and how that affects her own life.

A few lines later, Moraga implies that her mother passes away, and describes a wake-like scene: “dark women come to me / sitting in circles / I pass through their hands / the head of my mother”. The presence of the “dark women” speaks to Moraga and her mother’s identity as Chicanas. The act of passing the mother’s head around symbolizes passing around the mother’s physical representation of her identity; all aspects of her can be found represented in the head: the face, the eyes, the mouth, skin color, hair, etc. The women are not passing around the head of the mother, they are passing around her memory, her identity. Each “dark” woman, most likely family members and close friends, who touches her, is having an influence on her identity. This symbolizes that identities are strongly influenced by those who raise us, those we grow up with, those who surround us. No person’s identity exists inside a vacuum. This symbolic passing around of her mother’s identity demonstrates an integral part of Moraga’s coming of age, and how witnessing her mother’s death and coping with it helped shape her as a woman. The final lines emphasize this coming of age moment, “they cradle her silence / nodding to me”. The women acknowledge the passing of the mother and  while they are mourning and remembering, they turn to Moraga, the daughter, almost expectingly but also with encouragement. She is one of them now, a woman on her own, surrounded by her people, shaped by the memory and identity of her mother, and given the acceptance and support to be.

Discussion Questions: Real Women Have Curves

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Real Women Have Curves (Las mujeres de verdad tienen curvas),  Patricia Cardoso (2002).  It’s on reserve at the library.

Reading assignment for Monday, October 1. 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.

The film is set in 2002 Los Angeles, does this setting shape Ana’s experiences and/or the expectations? Does it influence your viewing of the film? In both cases, how?

What are Ana’s coming of age choices / moments? Does she own her choices?

What are the common roles for Chicanas in the film? How do some characters maintain, defy, or resist “traditional” gender roles?

What roles do mothers, sisters, and friends play in Ana’s evolution?
What roles do her father, grandfather, boyfriend play?

Does Ana and her choices remind you of any of the other young women we’ve read about for the class

Throughout the film, how does Ana view (hetero)sexuality (her own and that of others)?

During one scene, the background music is a song by the Columbian group Aterciopelados titled “chica difícil” from the CD la pipa de la paz (1996). The song’s lyrics begin “Soy una chica difícil, pero yo valgo la pena…”.(I am a difficult girl but I ‘m worth it…). Look up the lyrics for this song and discuss how it speaks to Ana’s growth.

(Discussion questions drawn from and inspired by: http://archive.ecml.at/ and http://chicanaws390.wordpress.com/)

#CHST302 Quinceañera Tweets

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Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eneas/

Feminism and La Quinceañera

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Based off of this week’s reading, I became interested in the idea of feminism and the quinceañera. I initially thought that there wasn’t an intersection between the two concepts, but after reading about the different aspects of the quinceañera I definitely see how the two can relate. That sparked my interested in terms of finding other scholars that see this connection as well. I came upon a short commentary by Charlotte Hernandez that gave me another insight into feminism for women of color.

Hernandez interviewed different women of color about how they experience feminism and how that changes the way they see their culture. Most of the responses tended to show that these women saw feminism in one category and their cultural ties in another. Meaning that feminism couldn’t exist for them if they obey the rules of their cultures. Sylvia, one of the women Hernandez quotes, says that she rejected the idea of the quinceañera because she wanted to reject the “sexist parts of [her] culture that go against [her] feminist consciousness.” Hernandez also points out the complication through all of this in writing that culture isn’t just a “collection of ideas and traditions but an important support system”(Hernandez, 20). To me, these ideas seem really rigid and it’s an either/other type of situation; either you consider yourself a feminist or you want to have cultural ties.

The reading from this week breaks down these complications and makes a point to say that feminism and culture aren’t really opposite things. The work of Dr. Davalos and Norma Cantú seem to prove this point best and I think they do it in really sophisticated manners. Cantú writes that the fiesta part of the quinceañera is “an ever-changing performance and not a fixed, homogenous artifact”(Cantú, 1). Davalos writes about the traditional aspect of the quinceañera as “an open, and sometimes chaotic, terrain that is constantly reconfigured in everyday experience” (Davalos, 103). For both of these women to argue that culture is fluid and not fixed creates an entirely new dimension to feminism for women of color. I think this is where the difference is between the work of Hernandez and the other scholars. To be critical of the work by Hernandez, I think she would have been able to take her analysis a bit further if she just understood that point.

Hernandez, Charlotte. “Juggling the Feminism and the Family: Women of Color and Feminism.” Off Our Backs Vol. 26, No. 3 (1996): pg 20. http://0-www.jstor.org.linus.lmu.edu/stable/20835420

Quinceañera sociolization

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Quincenera_video

The uploaded video shows the meaning of this Latino tradition called the Quinceañera. The young woman, Destiny Rodriguez, in the video speaks of her plans to change after turning 15. She says she will become more lady like. She will have different responsibilities. She has made plans for herself that otherwise would not be done if she did not have a quincenera, because if she wished to make changes, they would come regardless of age and celebration.

In the video we see that a quinceanera is a celebration of young girls coming to an age in which they can and are allowed to be noticed by boys. This celebration is a symbol of coming of age to many in where they will be able to date. They should behave a certain way, speak in such a way that will bring respect to themselves and their families.

People of different economic status hold a quinceañera for their daughters, but some families spend more than others; eventually becoming a downward spiral economically as we read in “Once Upon a Quinceanera” (64). The article also mentions that Hispanics tend to use their money immediately (801). This tradition has become very expensive just becuase parents want to give daughters a party of their life time. Not thingking about future consequences. This events seems to be more of a party than ritual becuase it has become more of a want than a traditional event.

Quinceanera’s have evolved into a celebration where mothers live their dreams through their daughter and force them to do things because that is how they would have liked it to be for themselves. These celebrations have hit the roof with regards to expenses. Having a quinceanera is not about how dreamy you can make the celebration, but introducing your daughter into the world of adults.  We saw the photos of Ale’s 15 celebration, which was very modest and sweet.  Her family gathered around to celebrate this special moment with her.  Spending thousands of dollars or only a few hundred, the meaning behind it is the same.

Discussion Questions: The Quinceañera

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Reading assignment for Monday, September 24, when we will have a guest presentation by Lisette Ordorica Lasater, a Ph.D. student at UC Riverside. 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.

Alvarez, Julia. Once Upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA. New York: Viking. 2007. 59-82

Cantú, Norma. La Quiñceanara: Towards an Ethnographic Analysis of a Life-Cycle Ritual.

Davalos, Karen Mary. “La Quinceañera”: Making Gender and Ethnic Identities. Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, 16: 1996, 101-127.

Palacios, Monica. “The Dress Was Too Itchy.” Fifteen Candles: 15 Tales of Taffeta, Hairspray, Drunk Uncles and Other Quinceañera Stories. Ed. Adriana Lopez. New York: HarperCollins 2007.

Watch: La Quinceanera: A Coming of Age Ritual in Latino Communities

Readings are in the protected readings page.

Have you been to a quinceañera — if yes, what was it like?  Would you have one for a daughter? A son?  What do you think of the quince as a coming of age ritual?  How does it compare to the coming of age experiences of Moraga and Cisneros?

 

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Photo Credit: from the photo stream of justplainhope

Moraga Lesbi & Money of the Poor

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Moraga’s coming of age was through her sexuality and the moments when she had to take on responsibilities whenever her mother needed assistance with translating documents to Spanish. This reminds me of my coming of age moments where my sister and I had to do something similar to what Moraga had to do with her mother. My mother has been a legal resident in this country for many years, and for many years she attended English courses. She showed progress when she was admitted to the second level of English learning classes. From there on, my mother could not move beyond the second level. I like to think that her inability to proceed with understanding the English language was because of the stress she underwent raising three kids.

My coming of age moment was not when I found out that my mother was not progressing, but instead it came every time my mother had me accompany her to look for work. My mother needed application translation and I would be the one to fill in the blank spaces for her. During the time when I sat there, I felt as if the people at the factory would automatically deny her work because of her lack of understanding the English language. Why would they hire someone that can’t even fill out an application? I also felt embarrassed, because 1) I felt insecure about what I was doing and 2) people eyed us as we sat together filing it out. I had the feeling of complete awareness of my situation, which was of a poor working class family and an illiterate mother.

The same used to happen to us whenever we would go to the grocery store. When the cashier did not speak Spanish, we would have to translate for my mother or actually cut out the food stamp dollars out of the package. The yellow, the pink, the green, and the blue money of the poor. As a kid, I knew that money made us different. People stared at us every time we tore the colorful money out of the booklet as if we were performing a magic trick. I knew that I did not want to do that for long-to feel embarrassed. Not about the government assistance, but having to be embarrassed of my mother. I think back at our times now, and I feel upset that our life brought me embarrassment. Unknowingly, I probably worsened the situation for my mother as she might have had coming of age moments as I was.

#CHST302 Loving in the War Years Tweets

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Joseph: “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.” “

Jessica: “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.”

Yadira: “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”. “