Chicana Feminist Research Articles

Aída Hurtado and Norma E. Cantú (eds.), MeXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction

Reviewed by: MeXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction ed. by Aída Hurtado and Norma E. Cantú Karen Mary Davalos (bio) Aída Hurtado and Norma E. Cantú, eds., MeXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction. University of Texas Press, 2020. Pp. 330. I have been waiting years for this book! In 2011 I purchased my first fashion item from the pop-up clothing shop UrbanXic at the annual Summer Institute of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social to express my Chicana sensibilities. The turquoise blue cotton knit sleeveless tunic is decorated with white faux embroidery, making visual quotations of Mexican textiles through a screenprinting process. The "anatomical corazón" (a design that Sandoval et al. take on in chapter 13 of the book) that appears on the lower portion of the dress covers my womb, symbolically referencing another life force (293). A few years later when UrbanXic was announced as one of the vendors at the antimall mercadito at Trópico de Nopal Gallery Art-Space, I traveled across Los Angeles County—from Westside to Eastside—to make several purchases of t-shirts and dresses for family gifts. Eventually, I came to recognize UrbanXic fashions at academic conferences, proclaiming to the wearer that we were creators of a "Chicana feminist uniform," a term I used to affectionately announce the shared symbolic meaning and subjectivity. The anthology takes up the same charge, and in its multiple chapters announcing the self-adornment of Chicana feminists in the academy (1, 3, 4, and 12) and one (13) specifically about UrbanXic fashions, the collection shows clearly that I was not the only person to take note of the trend and its meaning. The thirteen chapters plus an introduction push beyond my expectations, however. While I anticipated and enjoyed the chapters that employ personal narrative, I did not expect fashion analysis through literary criticism (chapter 10), media studies (chapters 7 and 8), consumption (chapters 6 and 12), visual and performing arts (chapters 9 and 13), and new media platforms about body positivity among women [End Page 146] of color (chapter 8). More significantly for the fields of Chicana/o/x and Latinx studies, I did not previously connect "Chicana" self-adornment to "meXicanas." The editors employ this term to mark inclusive, translingual, transnational, and blended structures that generate interdependence and unequal relations among Mexican women, Chicanas, Indigenous Mexican women, who often have their Asian and African roots, a point not always recognized; this complexity of style is at the heart of the book. They also use this term to declare homage to Rosa-Linda Fregoso, the scholar who coined the hybrid word. Their transnational and cross-cultural framing of fashion is more than I had imagined for a discussion of the politics of self-adornment, dress, and entrepreneurship, the topics of the book's three sections. Furthermore, as the editors observe, these transnational connections are discussed as appropriations of and as empowerment for meXicana indigeneity. Fashion and style provide the cultural texts through and on which the book's varied subjects create an "aesthetic of the self" both intimately personal and deeply social. One stand-out aspect of the book is its accessibility. The contributors employ a range of methods of Chicana feminist thought, from the intimacy of autobiography and personal narrative to quantitative social sciences and their reserved voice. As such, the book has something for every type of reader: undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and popular audiences. Its intersectional analysis and interdisciplinary approach will be familiar to Chicana/x and women of color feminist scholars. But if the book's organization appears linear, do not be misled; it offers a wide array of methodological and critical voices. Although the authors in the first section (Cantú, Méndez-Negrete, Díaz-Sánchez, Gutiérrez y Muhs, and D. Perez) center the personal narrative afforded by fashion and style, Petermon, Macías, and coauthors Sandoval, González, and Montes directly employ the autobiographical voice, a reminder of the embodied experience frequently edited out of academic writing. The final chapter is utterly inventive in its collaboration and in how the essay structures its critique as performance, and I expect it...

(De)Composing Ecological Futurities: Insurgent Worldmaking at the End of a World

Research Article| February 01 2021 (De)Composing Ecological Futurities: Insurgent Worldmaking at the End of a World The Cacophiliacs; The Cacophiliacs The Cacophiliacs include a number of revolving contributors including, for this writing, and in alphabetical order Angela Labador, Lore/tta LeMaster, Tyler Rife, B. Liahnna Stanley, Megan Stephenson, and Ana Isabel Terminel Iberri. All contributing authors claim full authorship over this collaboratively constructed project. All correspondence to Loretta.LeMaster@asu.edu. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Angela Labador; Angela Labador Angela Labador, MA, is a doctoral student and graduate teaching associate at Arizona State University, located on the unceded homelands of the Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’otham, and Pee-posh Peoples. Focusing on affect, social movements, the Global South, and transnational intersectionality, Angela’s scholarship aims to contribute to the critiques of the US empire and strives to align with the peoples’ struggles. Angela’s pronouns are siya/she. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Lore/tta LeMaster; Lore/tta LeMaster Lore/tta LeMaster, PhD, is an assistant professor of critical/cultural communication and performance studies at Arizona State University, which is located on the unceded lands of the Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’otham and Pee-posh Peoples. Lore/tta’s scholarship engages the intersectional constitution of cultural difference with particular focus on queer and trans of color life, art, and embodiment. Lore/tta’s pronouns are she/they. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Tyler S. Rife; Tyler S. Rife Tyler S. Rife, MA, is a PhD candidate and graduate teaching associate in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, which is located on the unceded lands of the Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’otham and Pee-posh Peoples. Tyler’s scholarship explores “critical ecological thought” as theory and method in practices of rhetoric, performance, pedagogy, and activism. Tyler’s pronouns are he/they. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google B. Liahnna Stanley; B. Liahnna Stanley B. Liahnna Stanley, MA (Poarch Creek, Mvskoke) is a doctoral student in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, which is located on the unceded homelands of the Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’otham, and Pee-Posh Peoples. Liahnna’s research draws upon advancing Indigenous intellectual and political systems for liberatory resurgence and resistance. Her research focuses on queer Indigenous relationalities, decolonial health and healing, and anti-colonial social movements. Liahnna’s pronouns are she/they. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Megan Stephenson; Megan Stephenson Megan Stephenson, MA, is a doctoral student and graduate teaching associate at Arizona State University located on the unceded lands of the Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’otham, and Pee-posh Peoples. Megan’s scholarship is focused on critical communication pedagogy and intersectionality with relation to the constitution of both material and discursive realities. With specific focus on necropolitics and biopolitics, her focus lies on the way power is utilized to control racialized and gendered bodies. Megan’s pronouns are she/ her. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ana Isabel Terminel Iberri Ana Isabel Terminel Iberri Ana Isabel Terminel Iberri, MA, is a PhD candidate and graduate teaching associate at Arizona State University which is located on the unceded lands of the Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’otham and Pee-posh Peoples. Ana’s scholarship aims to develop Critical Communication Pedagogy in context with youth outside of the classroom. She does so by drawing on intersectionality and Chicana Feminism through rhetorical, critical qualitative, and performative approaches. Ana’s pronouns are she/ella. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (2021) 8 (1): 131–145. https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.8.1.0131 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation The Cacophiliacs, Angela Labador, Lore/tta LeMaster, Tyler S. Rife, B. Liahnna Stanley, Megan Stephenson, Ana Isabel Terminel Iberri; (De)Composing Ecological Futurities: Insurgent Worldmaking at the End of a World. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 1 February 2021; 8 (1): 131–145. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.8.1.0131 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressQED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2021 Michigan State University2021 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature ed. by Trevor Boffone and Cristina Herrera

Reviewed by: Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature ed. by Trevor Boffone and Cristina Herrera Angel Daniel Matos (bio) Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature, edited by Trevor Boffone and Cristina Herrera. UP of Mississippi, 2020. In the forum on Latinx Young Adult Literature published in volume 47 of Children's Literature, Marilisa Jiménez García introduces the compilation of essays by highlighting how Latinx literature pushes scholars to question what people and experiences are often excluded from academic discourse. In particular, Jiménez García highlights the potential that Latinx literature possesses to reframe and recontextualize our critical and pedagogical relationship with youth literatures and cultures: "Latinx literature is a liminal space daring us to transcend disciplines and borders, asking us to go beyond our neat definitions" (7). In addition to underscoring the critical potentialities of Latinx youth literatures, Jiménez García urges scholars to resist the homogenizing pressures of perpetuating a single story through our research and to move beyond mainstream narratives that frame Latinxs as "light-skinned [End Page 277] Spanish speakers" (6). In more ways than one, Trevor Boffone and Cristina Herrera's Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature (henceforth Nerds) not only celebrates people, experiences, and texts that push us to rethink normative understandings of young Latinx life, but further complies with Jiménez García's call for critical interventions that push us to acknowledge the complexity, richness, and paradoxes present in multiple representations of Latinx experience. This exemplifies a crucial intervention within the field of young adult literature, especially within the intersection of Latinx literature, youth cultures, and existing conversations on marginalization and liminality in teen cultural productions. The essays in Nerds scrutinize representations of teen Latinx life that contest or pressure mainstream narratives that associate these teens with "cool" and "hip" practices and beliefs. Most of the essays focus on teens who would commonly be described as "uncool," or that challenge the stereotypical representation of Latinx adolescents in literature and media. Additionally, the essays push readers to interrogate the ways in which "uncool" and ostracized teens must negotiate their outsider status given their positionality as members of marginalized Latinx communities. Although Nerds could have implemented a more robust introductory framework that would assist readers in further understanding the tensions that exist between Latinx contexts and "uncool" experiences and identities—which are often aligned with frameworks pertaining to ideological whiteness—this collection excels at highlighting new, unprecedented, and academically rigorous ways of thinking about Chicanx and Latinx young adult literature. The volume succeeds in its mission to challenge normative and monolithic notions of what teen Latinx life looks and feels like—and in the process, it pushes readers to engage in necessary, albeit difficult conversations on topics such as cultural authenticity and the limits of mainstream representations. Nerds is organized into four overarching sections, and each of these is focused on Latinx teen characters who embody different types of marginalized or "outsider" identities: artists and creators, superheroes and nonhuman beings, nerds and academically driven teens, and "non-cholo" characters who contest norms of gender and sexuality. The first section, "Artists and Punks," more specifically focuses on characters who are outsiders given their creative interests—with a particular attention in young Latinx women who engage with writing and zine crafting as a way of negotiating their liminal positionalities. The section opens with Amanda Ellis's "Chicana Teens, Zines, and Poetry [End Page 278] Scenes: Gabi, A Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero," which traces how Quintero's book offers a gripping representation of a geeky Chicana feminist by highlighting the transformative and political potential of creative writing and journaling. Lettycia Terrones's standout essay, "Praxis of Refusal: Self-Fashioning Identity and Throwing Attitude in Pérez's The First Rule of Punk," examines the social challenges that bicultural and mix-raced girls often experience, focusing particularly on how the protagonist of Celia C. Pérez's middle-grade novel invokes a punk-rock sensibility in order to develop an activist-oriented identity that resists assimilative pressures. Terrones's essay rigorously grapples...

Conjuring Hands: The Art of Curious Women of Color

The verb “to conjure” is a complex one, for it includes in its standard definition a great range of possible actions or operations, not all of them equivalent, or even compatible. In its most common usage, “to conjure” means to perform an act of magic or to invoke a supernatural force, by casting a spell, say, or performing a particular ritual or rite. But “to conjure” is also to influence, to beg, to command or constrain, to charm, to bewitch, to move or convey, to imagine, to visualize, to call to mind, or to remember. —Rachael DeLue 2012, para 1.When we create with our Brown hands, feminine energy, and full spirits, we conjure. To exist, survive, and thrive in these bodies is a continuous act of conjuring. Our walks conjure. Our smiles conjure. Our tears conjure. Our laughs conjure. Our words conjure. Our artworks are conjurings. We, a Black/Filipina-American woman, a Dominican-American, and a Black-American woman, are guided by our solidarity with one another and all other Black and Brown female identifying persons whose raced and gendered subjectivities exist both inside and outside of colonization, white supremacy, and patriarchy. We bring to life our colored imaginations and curiosities, and share them with the world. We are united by our need for safety, autonomy as beings, dissolution of trauma, and desire to ask, “What would happen if I…?” Imaginative, curious Women of Color (WoC) founded the underground railroad, guided captured Africans and Tainos to the mountains, ignited the Civil Rights Movement, organized laborers and immigrants, birthed the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, conceived the #MeToo Movement, and so much more. Like our kindred counterparts, we have an unrelenting urge to examine, question, wonder, desire, speak to, lead, be curious, and “conjure.” As practicing artists and art educators, our critical arts-based practices are grounded in intersectional feminisms like Womanism, Black Feminist Theory, and Chicana Feminist Theory, which allow us to do these very things.

Art Comes for the Archbishop

AbstractInspired by the Chicana feminist artist Alma López’s Our Lady (1999), this essay explores Chicana cultural and psychic investments in representations of the Virgin of Guadalupe. As an image of the suffering mother, the Virgin of Guadalupe is omnipresent in Mexican-American visual culture. Her image has been refigured by several generations of Chicana feminist artists, including Alma López. Chicana feminist reclaiming of the Virgin, however, has been fraught with controversy. Chicana feminist cultural work—such as the art of Alma López, performances by Selena Quintanilla, and writings by Sandra Cisneros and John Rechy—expand the queer and Chicana identifications and desires, and contest narrow, patriarchal nationalisms. By deploying critical race psychoanalysis and semiotics, we can unpack the libidinal investments in the brown female body, as seen in both in popular investments in protecting the Catholic version of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Chicana feminist reinterpretations.

Guerreras y Puentes: the theory and praxis of Latina(x) activism

ABSTRACT Latinas have long played a vital but under-acknowledged role in US social justice movements. The complexity of their hybrid racial and multi-faceted identities shapes but also obscures their activism, placing them at the juncture of or in the space between movements. Like others at the intersection of multiple marginalities, they have pushed back against marginalization in mainstream movements, forging their own way in hostile environments. Using their positional assets as the translators and bridge builders between movements, they have developed insights and practices for working across difference and addressing the multiple and interlocking forms of oppression that impact their communities. In this article, we first theorize Latina(x) activism in regard to their intersectional location and the development of a mestiza consciousness, placing the insights of Chicana feminism in conversation with the growing literature on social movement intersectionality in order to propose indicators of intersectional praxis. We then use a structured focused comparison of four distinct social movement organizations to examine Latina(x) intersectional praxis, illustrating its contributions to and its potentials for social justice organizing.

Remembering and Revisiting Pedagogies of the Home

Almost two decades after Delgado Bernal’s theorization of pedagogies of the home, this article examines pedagogies of the home of four Chicana/o college-educated families to understand the role of parent engagement not only in the college choice processes but also in college completion and graduate school enrollment. Using Chicana feminisms to inform educational oral histories, four Chicana/o parent-child dyads were interviewed. The findings suggest that among Chicana/o college-educated families the (re)making of home, (re)covering tensions, and (re)claiming and (re)learning of cultural knowledge were the pedagogies of the home that were embraced by two successive generations of college completers. Complexities, contradictions, and nuances among Chicana/o college-educated families add to the theorization of pedagogies of the home.

Haki/pláticas ∼ testimonios/shahadat: Arabyya feminista decolonial praxis

The authors share how their Arabyyat and Chicana feminist pedagogies and methodologies, haki/pláticas ∼ testimonios/shahadat, contribute to a decolonial praxis. We center haki/pláticas ∼ testimonios/shahadat and introduce what we term as “Arabyya feminista decolonial praxis” in education as an act of linguistic and epistemic disobedience. Our work, pedagogies and methodologies, advance the esthetic dimensions of our Arabyya feminista praxis. We delineate how in merging theory and practice is intuitively guided by our her/histories, sensibilities, and ways of being for/with each other. Coming from la Mirada al Sur, our transnational collaboration is captured in our testimonios/shahadat and displayed in the poetics and art that sprung via our haki/pláticas. We conclude that this work is needed more than ever and with a brief analysis of the esthetics of these methodologies as our Arabyya feminista decolonial praxis.

The Power of Testimonio Pedagogy: Teaching Chicana Lesbian Fiction in a Chicana Feminisms Course at a Predominantly White Institution in the Midwest

In this essay I extend Chicana/Latina feminist pedagogies to demonstrate using testimonio pedagogy to teach Chicana lesbian fiction: Gulf Dreams and What Night Brings opened up dialogical spaces for students as pensadores to critically examine the impact of racialized gender and sexual normativity within Chicano culture. Exploring the significance of students as pensadores using testimonio pedagogy cultivates pathways of epistemic disobedience that should be understood as responses to institutional power. I suggest testimonio pedagogy mediates marginalization by breaking down the false dichotomy between students and teachers, cultivates feminist consciousness-raising, and refuses hegemonic conceptualizations of schooling.

Storytelling with Nepantla: A Portrait of One Mexican American Teacher’s Literacy Practices

ABSTRACT In this article, the author braids storytelling with oral life history interviews, Chicana Feminisms, and portraiture. The piece centers the portrait of Ms. Sotomayor, a veteran elementary teacher, who through her stories shares with us pedagogies of pain, trust, autonomy, and empowerment. These glimpses of her life journey as a Nepantlera offer readers opportunities to see her stories as fuel for her spiritual activism, evident in her teaching. The portrait highlighted in this article comes from a larger study that centers the life stories of Chicana K–12 teachers from Southern California who view their teaching as a political, spiritual, and/or moral commitment. Using oral life history interviews and classroom observations to invite Chicana teachers to tell their stories, I document how this group of teachers explain connections between their lived experiences and their literacy pedagogies and practices in the classroom. Through Muxerista Portraiture and a borderlands analysis, I testify the power of stories from women who struggle for a better tomorrow. Implications include the possibilities of Nepantla as a pedagogical framework in teacher education praxis with homegrown, Teachers of Color.

Spiritual Activism as a Means for Social Transformation: Womanist and Chicana Feminist Possibilities

ABSTRACT In the wake of Trump’s presidency, children of color have been increasingly subjected to overt racism in and outside of educational settings. After seeing “In light of the Trump effect” or the anxiety and fear that has ensued for children of color since Trump’s pre-election campaign, we suggest that concerted actions are needed from often untapped sources that cross human-centric boundaries such as spiritual activism. We contend that we must rethink human-more-than-human binaries, while simultaneously working towards equity and social justice. Womanist and Chicana feminist spirituality de-centers the human, while providing a means to transform oppressive conditions. In this theoretical wondering, we posit that spiritual activism is vital to the well-being of young children of color and the broader world.

Toward Praxis

Toward Praxis

THE CONSTRUCTED CHICANA IDENTITY AND MYTH IN THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET

This article deals with Sandra Cisneros’s (1954 – ) novel The House on Mango Street (1984) in terms of Chicana feminism, which emerged as a reaction against the male-dominated structure of Chicano Movement. In this sense, Cisneros’s novel can be regarded as a narration of how the Chicano society is built upon mythical constructions of gender roles, the paralyzed consciousness of women. The protagonist of the novel, Esperanza becomes aware of these myths in her society by observing the wrongful behaviors of both women and men and realizes these fossilized values, which suppress the women both spatially and intellectually. She sees that the women are treated like commodities and sexual objects and decides to react and find a new way to reconstruct the community. Cisneros reflects the constructed women images in the microcosmic Mango Street and her stand against this corrupted consideration. As a way of breaking the constructed roles, she implies awareness, remedy, change, and action for the women.

‘The collision of two worlds’: when a teacher-centered facilitator meets a student-centered pedagogy

ABSTRACT Social aspects among Mexican society are based on gender hierarchy influencing every decision-making process. I was taught from a young age that every decision needed to come from me. While I had the opportunity to learn an activist approach to working with youth during my doctoral journey, I never thought it would challenge the epistemology of my personal and professional life. An activist approach is based on critical and feminist pedagogies. As such, Chicana feminist theory invited me to question what has been inherited, learned and imposed throughout life, and how this created a conflict between what I was taught and what I was learning. The purpose of this study was to explore the challenges of a teacher-centered facilitator implementing a student-centered pedagogy. This paper is the result of a four-year critical autoethnography project using an activist approach for working with youth in an after-school sports club. Findings are divided into three sections: (1) learning to understand the influence of cultural backgrounds on becoming an activist teacher/researcher over time, (2) how to negotiate the discomfort and challenges faced in the process of moving from a teacher-centered to student-centered positionality and (3) moving from discomfort to comfort with a student-centered approach. Through this process I began to take inventory of my historical upbringing, creating a space for self-reflexivity that allowed me to deconstruct ‘old ways’ and merge them with ‘new’.

Bridging silos in higher education: using Chicana Feminist Participatory Action Research to foster Latina resilience

This study takes place at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and examines the experience of women who are part of a research collective studying a Latina college mentoring program. As of Fall 2018, Latina undergraduates made up the largest group at this university, totaling more than 7,000 of 37,000 undergraduate students. In Fall 2016, a college mentoring program to support Latina undergraduates was launched by campus administrators. Out of the program, a multi-generational research collective formed where the research team uses a Chicana Feminist Participatory Action Research (CFPAR) design that engages program staff, faculty, administrators, graduate and undergraduate students in both the design of the study and the continual re-design and implementation of the college mentoring program. This paper uses the researchers’ testimonios and group pláticas to share about their role in the implementation of the research using a CFPAR approach and how they have been impacted by this Latina-centered space that fosters resilience. This research has implications for faculty, staff/practitioner, and student collaboration and for how institutions can support spaces like this to better serve Latinas in higher education.

Borderlands Legacy in Chicana Feminist Thought

Borderlands Legacy in Chicana Feminist Thought

Small Town Values: Exploring the Values of Latina College Students from Rural Communities

ABSTRACTThis multiple-case study sought to understand the values of Latina college students from rural communities and how those values impacted their choices concerning higher education. Archival records, artifacts, interviews, and other documents created a holistic view of each individual case. A Chicana feminist framework allowed researchers to examine how the participants’ Latina identity, as well as their rural communities, informed their values. Analysis of the data revealed the responsibility that students felt toward their family and community as well as the important role of matriarchs in the formation of the young women’s values and behavior.

Chasing Miss Jimenez: Rereading the Chicana Vendida through Colonial Affect-Culture

This article brings a new reading of Luis Valdez’s 1967 one-act play, Los Vendidos, that highlights the problematic gendering of selling out depicted through the character of Miss Jimenez. I read Miss Jimenez and the resentment directed at her for her assimilation as indicative of the larger gendered affect of resentment that Chicana feminists experienced during the Chicana/o movement. I trace how this resentment is directly related to colonial legacies and reproduces colonial hierarchies that continue to devalue women of color. As Chicana feminists voiced their concerns about male-centered activism, they were labeled as vendidas and agringadas (assimilated or “Anglocized”). I detail how, in response to this gendered resentment, Chicana feminists created an activist pedagogical strategy that did not abandon middle-class assimilated Chicana/os but rather validated their lived experiences as part of the Chicana/o experience even if it was not working class.

Gradual Losses

Gradual Losses Mario Grill (bio) Native Country of the Heart Cherríe Moraga Farrar, Straus and Giroux www.us.macmillan.com/books/9780374219666 256 Pages; Cloth, $26.00 Seeing those dearest to us leaving this world is certainly never easy, but this experience becomes even harder when they already fade away and forget who they are while still among us. Native Country of the Heart takes readers onto such a journey. Instead of offering an account about how Cherríe Moraga has become such a strong figure in Chicana feminism, readers get something different. Moraga's memoir tells the story of her mother, Elvira Isabel Moraga, who "was not the stuff of literature. Few bemoan the memory loss of the unlettered. … But when our storytellers go, taking their unrecorded memory with them, we their decedents go too, I fear." In this book, Moraga conveys a powerful tale about how both mother and daughter grow to distance themselves from their cultural heritage and origins for the sake of assimilation. She keeps on reminding us that "your mind just can't sweep away memories cuz it's the heart that remembers," echoing what currently happens at the US-Mexican border. Ultimately, Moraga sets out to tell an emotional tale about women's hardships and the gradual loss of her mother while the latter loses herself due to the progression of her Alzheimer's. Being stripped of parts of their identities and experiencing forced assimilation are timely issues numerous members of the Chicanx and Latinx communities have to face these days. Thus, it is only fitting that Moraga makes memory and the process of forgetting essential parts of ourselves essential parts of her memoir. The narrative is organized around Elvira—or Vera, as she is named/called in the US—and her final years following her diagnoses with Alzheimer's in 2003. Just like we remember things, Moraga does not use a linear timeline but instead jumps from one distinct moment to another. She uses flashbacks to fill gaps or emphasizes certain moments in her mother's life while simultaneously including key moments of her own life. By doing so, Moraga constantly reminds readers of the importance of cultural heritage and the passing on of distinct values before it is too late. However, she also never fails to highlight women's struggles against patriarchy in both Mexico and in the US, noting many instances in which women are silenced by the presence and dominance of men. At the same time, she tries to counteract that silencing in her memoir. Parallel to the narrative thread revolving around Elvira's memories blurring, Moraga depicts one in which readers are invited to follow the daughter to find her "voice" even though Moraga too is silenced by her own brother at times. Highlighting the concept of familia and the importance of looking out for each other, Moraga describes in considerable detail what Elvira means to her, especially her mother's love. This unwavering support, she explains, "is what would shape my lesbianism and this is what would mark my road as a Mexican and this is what would require me to remember before and beyond my mother." Elvira's upbringing, her coming of age in the 1930s in Tijuana, working as a cigarette girl in a casino, and eventually marring a white man and moving to the United States, has shaped Elvira's understanding of where she belongs. Elvira acknowledges that she has worked hard for the realization of her American dream but that she feels like she had to leave a part of herself behind in doing so. This becomes clear when mother and daughter seek out a curandero in Mexico City to cure Elvira's hands, which had been covered in a horrible rash for years. He does not only heal them but also the sorrow she feels in her heart, a feature American and western medicine could never achieve. For Moraga, Mexico too has healing potential as she finds the strength to realize her ambitions to end her feeling of being chained down by the expectations of patriarchy and Mexican womanhood. Moraga also provides insight into the idea behind her and...

From the Virgen del Panecillo to the Virgen del Legrado: (Trans)national Feminist Struggles for Reproductive Rights in the Andes

This article explores how (trans)national feminist artists and activists in Ecuador, Peru, and the United States strategically (re)appropriate Catholic cultural artifacts to denounce religious, patriarchal, and heterosexist colonial laws, mandates, and symbols around reproduction and bodily autonomy. Throughout I employ a (trans)national feminist analysis of the fight for women's reproductive rights in both Ecuador and Peru in the early twenty-first century and analyze two instances in which the Virgen del Panecillo—a famous monument of the Virgen de Quito that was constructed in Quito, Ecuador, in 1976—has been utilized to highlight state and church control over women's bodies and reproductive rights. The first is a public action staged atop the monument in 2008 during which two feminist organizations used the strategic location of the Virgen del Panecillo as part of a larger campaign to legalize abortion in Ecuador. I pair my analysis with a photograph by Peruvian artist Cecilia Podestá titled Virgen del Legrado, released on September 28, 2009. My examination of the photograph highlights the (trans)national circulation of the Virgin—in many ways, reminiscent of how the Virgen de Guadalupe in Mexico and the United States has circulated and been reimagined by Chicana feminist organizers, artists, and scholars to extend women's rights. I demonstrate how the artistic uses of the Virgen del Panecillo underscore histories shaped by colonialism and uncover the intimate relationship between empire and the constructions of race, class, sex, gender, and sexuality.