Reading Assignment: Your reply (under Comments) is due before class on Wednesday, February 15. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.
- Lorna Dee Cervantes, “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway”
- Angie Chabram Dernersesian “And, Yes…The Earth Did Part: On Splitting Chicana/o Subjectivity” (from Building With Our Hands, 34-56)
- Bernice Zamora, “Notes From a Chicana Coed” (from Making Face, Making Soul)
Reading both Cervantes and Dernersesian, how do you see the images of generations in Chicana feminism? What can each woman in Cervantes’ poem represent? What do you associate with the poetic images of freeways and their shadows? Do you agree with Dernersesian’s thesis that Chicana poetry / art constructs and positions multiple Chicana identities? According to Dernersesian, how do these identities relate to Rendón’s machismo / malinchismo dichotomy?
How does Zamora’s “Notes From a Chicana Coed” read along side Cervantes’s “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway”?
Reading from Dernersesian’s article, how would you say Aztlán is split in Cervantes’ poem? How in Zamora’s?
Zamora’s “Notes From A Chicana Coed” is a lot bolder and challenging than Cervantes’ “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway.” However both illustrate as Dernersesian describes in “And, Yes…The Earth Did Part: On Splitting Chicana/o Subjectivity” (from Building With Our Hands, 34-56) that Chicana discourse is more powerful because “hers is marked by her own testimonial of concrete, lived experiences of gender oppression” unlike Chicano’s that was a lot more abstract (51). Both poets retell lived experiences but Cervantes focuses on the different lived experiences of Chicana Women and gender oppression while Zamora places the discourse on a larger scale. Zamora discusses oppression from multiple angles. When Cervantes writes “We were a woman family/Grandma, our innocent Queen;/ Mama, the Swift Knight, Fearless Warrior./Mama wanted to be Princess instead” she is addressing a generation gap but she intends to empower all women. She is celebrating women’s strength when dealing with men by making it very uplifting. Zamora and Cervantes utilize a lot of natural imagery like “mariposas,” “pajaros” as representation of womanhood. It evokes women’s desire for liberation which I have explored in the poems of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda who I believe was a feminist author even though, the ideology did not exist in the period in which she wrote. Her and other women authors like Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz helped paved the way for future women authors. I feel that Cervantes and Zamora used poetry in a similar manner as Avellaneda did to promote gender equality and to feminize the subject in poetry.
I think the shadow of the freeway in Lorna’s poem represents the obstacle of growth for Chicana women. In the begining of the poem it talks about the grandmother watering the plant, but a shadow was over it. I think this is foreshadowing the meaning of the poem Lorna is trying to get across, which is that the fight for the women in her family to find a good man is in vain. Instead you see they all have their way of dealing with the void of this good man. The grandmother put up with an abusive husband for 25 years because she didn’t think she would find anything better. The mother has to play the role of a father to, “Mama, the Swift Knight, Fearless Warrior. Mama wanted to be Princess instead”, even though she would like to just play the role of mom. The daughter uses her moms and grandmothers ways,combined with her own opinions that were encouraged by her learned knowledge to know how to live with or without a male in her life. Instead of just accepting with the lack of male support, Angie supports women speaking out to have it corrected. On page 49, Angie illustrates the picture that women are screaming for help for equality in marriage, political weight, jobs, and many other problems. This screaming is the only way the Chicana women will be heard by the Chicano men and the world. The women feel their screaming will give them some type of breakthrough, but they feel it will be their daughters who will really be able to enjoy the freedom. Bernice is more related to Lorna with her way of dealing with the Chicano man. She shows that the Chicana women has to get it done herself if she wants anything, and not wait around for the Chicano man. If she wants to get out of poverty, get an education, or feed her kids, the only way to do this is by the Chicana taking action into her own hands.
Chicanas have always struggled to determine what it actually means to be a Chicana. Is it simply a description of ethnicity, or does it envelop behaviors and ideologies, and from where does one derive this definition? In the poems we read, by Lorna Dee Cervantes and Bernice Zamora, the authors seem to be defining themselves as Chicanas in the context of men. The narrator in Cervantes’s poem describes her family of women, living apparently independently. Yet, there are constant references to men that are either absent or present in their lives, mirrored in her imagery of an ever-present freeway shadow. These supposedly strong Chicana women cook for themselves, clean for themselves, build their own houses. Yet they deride each other as “soft” and insult each other based on their relationships with men. The narrator of Zamora’s poem is carrying on an affair with a man of el movimiento who is oppressive to her, and the reader can see how she begins to define herself by his oppression. Not necessarily in that she sees herself worthy of the oppression, but rather that she sees herself as defined by the way the machismo culture uses women to fulfill men’s needs and then imposes limitations on their behavior. When struggling for self-definition, this is initially done easiest by definition in comparison to those around you, especially those who you are specifically separating yourself from. So, in that way, I understand why Chicanas, when initially defining what it meant to be Chicana, identified themselves in (positive or negative) relation to men. In Yolanda Lopez’s Guadalupe art, I see a progression. These works, portraying the Chicana woman, are done exclusively with images of women. The women are not portrayed in contrast to men to explain themselves, they are portrayed only with other women. The types of women portrayed vary, but they are all definitely Chicana. I label this as a progression because it is a definition of Chicana that stems from Chicanas in relation to each other, as opposed to their context to men.
From both Cervantes and Dernersesian’s collection of poems, I can see the that the generations of Chicanas are separated by the challenges that they face being in the U.S. For example, the eldest in “Beneath the Shadow” is tending to her garden and goes about her days simply, yet “only trusting what she builds with her own hands.” The mother, still young enough to be the “Fearless Warrior,” is busy finding her place and telling her daughter of how not to be like her grandmother. The youngest represents a different struggle to redefine herself between her job, her mother and grandmother, and simply in her home where she sees the bridge opposite of her. Likewise, in the second poem of “The Earth Did Part”, written by the 13-year-old, she’s attempting to define herself through the different identities of a Chicana and the reactions of someone else, of those identities.
The ideas of the freeways and shadows makes me think of the fact that highway bridges usually traverse through neighborhoods of lower income when they’re not next to commercial areas. It reminds me of the uproar that was started in San Diego as a response to the Coronado bridge-how oppressive and overwhelming it is in its size. It makes me think of the snake-like shadows it casts, that simply grow throughout the day, on the barrios beneath it.
Zamora’s poem next to Cervantes’s poem, if placed together form a story. Due to the general explanation of what the women do day in and day out, “Notes from a Chicana Coed” makes me imagine a more narrowed view into the lives of one of the women. It’s like describing their experience with a man and recalls that sort of cynicism and distrust of men from the mother.
Lorna Dee Cervantes’ poem “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway” represents the idea of change across generations. Although it highlights woman power and independence, it also shows a wave from generation to generation. The poem first talks about the grandma watering her geraniums, her hair tied in loose braids and her belief and tendency to only trust what she built with her own hands, which are three things she mentions doing herself towards the end of the poem. I think this shows that we learn to pick up some of the characteristics that build up our surroundings and that as Tafolla says in Dernersesian’s “And Yes…The Earth did Part,” “It is not we who separate people off into groups — our society has already done that for us” (40). I think this is an interesting concept because in Dee Cervantes’ poem, the grandma lived with her abusive husband for 25 years. But her mother says that it was the grandmother’s own fault for staying with him for so long and we see in the mother’s description that she was able to raise a child on her own. Then in this new generation, the daughter, we see the description of someone that can do all the “light man-work” and “fix faucets” and do all these commonly male done jobs. Thus, this poem really highlights the changes that occur from generation to generation, and how as each newer generation learned to be more independent and able to stand on their own, other things remained the same like the loose braids, the geraniums and the belief to trust what they made with their own hands. I also agree with Beatriz in the fact that both Dee Cervantes’ and Zamora’s poems include imagery that has to do with birds or animals that fly like “pajaros”, “mariposas”, “birds”, and “mockingbirds.” The fact that all of these have the liberty to fly as they wish emphasizes the idea of women seeking their freedom and independence, which we can see when the grandmother talks about mockingbirds and her admiration for them, because that freedom and independence are things she did not have.
I think both poems illustrates that the different generations of Chicanas have been influenced by the presence or lack of presence of men in their lives. In Cervantes poem, it seems that the three women in the family represent the different changes in the generations of the family. While the grandmother stays with an abusive husband for twenty five years, her daughter raises her own daughter by herself, while the daughter becomes more independent herself. Yet even with these changes, there still remains things that don’t change. With each generation they became more self reliant and less reliant on men. Thus allowing them to become independent.
while reading the poems I never thought about the importance of the birds being mentioned. It wasn’t until I read the comments that they represented the ideas of freedom and independence. So thanks for pointing that out Beatriz and Erika.
I agree with the section on “Imaging the Split Chicana Subject: Lopez’s (Fallen) Guadalupe” on how they believe Yolanda Lopez is the best artist within the Chicana realm. However I do see where they consider her as controversial. I wrote about Yolanda Lopez, in my second blog and she does have some unique and out of the ordinary ideas. Her version of the fallen Guadalupe is unlike the original but she depicts a strong female figure as her center piece. She does merge modern with traditional, especially with the fallen Guadalupe, incorporating the original but also including a female runner and a mother breast feeding her child. Yolanda Lopez is given much credit on the fact that she redefines Chicanas. She is inspirational and I am not surprised that this reading dedicates a section to her work.
Dernersesian comments on “Notes from a Chicana Coed” and its criticism on machismo and the oppression of Chicanas within the movement. She states that it “exmplifies this type of consciousness raising as its speaking subject instructs the Chicano male about the theoretical and practical contradictions of ‘Chicano heavies” who engage in the exploitation of women in the home (Dernersesian, 51). Dernesesian also quotes Enriqueta Vasquez and the censorship she felt when she tried speaking up against machismo and trying to make the Chicanos understand their perspective. Instead the “Machos” would pretend like they didn’t hear anything. This reminds me of a particular instant in one of our last week’s readings when at the gathering or at a conference the women declared how machismo was marginalizing them, and the men did not really contribute to the discussion. Specifically in this poem the word “carnal” is being used over and over again to place emphasis on that relationship of “brotherhood” and the lack of kinship amongst Chicanas and Chicanos because of patriarchal/hierarchical norms.
Each piece was definitely a different approach to the gendered discourse we find in society. I feel that Dernersesian’s approach looks at the gendering and tries to come to terms with it as she explores identification. This is especially evident when she goes over each poem, noting how each poet identifies from the 13 year old Californian to the other women. While Cervantes looks at the family discourse. Here she is taught that being soft is bad because she won’t “get nothing but shit”(Cervantes line 71) so her mom tell her to protect herself by depending on no one. The child in this poem believes that “If you are good to them/ they’ll be good to you back,” (lines 79-80)displaying the naïve mindset in the rhetoric we are taught about the golden rule but sadly from her mom and grandma’s experience they can testify that through the gendering in our society that golden rule doesn’t always hold. As for Zamora’s poem, we see from the way it starts off that the gabacho isn’t always at fault. She notices the injustices in their marriage/ relationship but all her guy can see is how the gabacho is oppressing them. She feels helpless and resorts to poetry because maybe then her voice will be heard. Its interesting though because the things she points out, her partner sees but they don’t resonate in the same way to him. So I feel like the gendering is somewhat more subtle here.