Chicana feminist narratives and the politics of the self

Frontiers

Volumn 21, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 105-123

  Elenes, C Alejandra ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0034355157     PISSN: 01609009     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3347113     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. See Cherríe Moraga, Loving in the War Years: lo que nunca pas por sus labios (Boston: South End Press, 1983), and The Last Generation (Boston: South End Press, 1993); Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987); and Pat Mora, Nepanila: Essays From the Land in the Middle (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993).
2. See Cherríe Moraga, Loving in the War Years: lo que nunca pas por sus labios (Boston: South End Press, 1983), and The Last Generation (Boston: South End Press, 1993); Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987); and Pat Mora, Nepanila: Essays From the Land in the Middle (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993).
3. See Cherríe Moraga, Loving in the War Years: lo que nunca pas por sus labios (Boston: South End Press, 1983), and The Last Generation (Boston: South End Press, 1993); Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987); and Pat Mora, Nepanila: Essays From the Land in the Middle (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993).
4. See Cherríe Moraga, Loving in the War Years: lo que nunca pas por sus labios (Boston: South End Press, 1983), and The Last Generation (Boston: South End Press, 1993); Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987); and Pat Mora, Nepanila: Essays From the Land in the Middle (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993).
5. Caren Kaplan, ́Resisting Autobiography: Out-Law Genres and Transnational Feminist Subjects,́ in De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women's Autobiography, ed. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 119.
6. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "Introduction: Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism," in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. ChandraTalpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 33.
7. John Beverly, "The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio (Testimonial Narrative)," in Watson and Smith, De/Colonizing the Subject, 94.
8. Gloria Bowles and Renate Duelli Klein, "Introduction: Theories of Women's Studies and the Autonomy/Integration Debate," in Theories of Women's Studies, ed. Gloria Bowles and Renate Duelli Klein (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), 1-26.
9. Patricia Ann Lather, Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy With/In the Postmodern (New York: Routledge, 1991), 71, emphasis original.
10. Although discussion of the role of incorporating students' experience in the classroom is crucial, in this paper I am only focusing on the role of experience as manifested in autobiographical texts. It would be beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the pedagogical and political issues involved in the role that students' experience has in the classroom.
11. Ana Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); and Mara Elena Lucas, Forged Under the Sun/ Forjada bajo el sol: the Life of Mara Elenas Lucas, ed. Fran Leeper Buss (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993).
12. Ana Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); and Mara Elena Lucas, Forged Under the Sun/Forjada bajo el sol: the Life of Mara Elenas Lucas, ed. Fran Leeper Buss (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993).
13. By the fixed unified subject I mean the humanist modernist notion of the subject as a conscious and rational being with a fixed identity. This is the understanding of the subject present in much of the literature that argues against multicultural education. See Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: The Free Press, 1991); E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987); Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Student's (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987); and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America (Knoxville, Tenn.: Whittle Direct Books, 1991).
14. By the fixed unified subject I mean the humanist modernist notion of the subject as a conscious and rational being with a fixed identity. This is the understanding of the subject present in much of the literature that argues against multicultural education. See Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: The Free Press, 1991); E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987); Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Student's (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987); and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America (Knoxville, Tenn.: Whittle Direct Books, 1991).
15. By the fixed unified subject I mean the humanist modernist notion of the subject as a conscious and rational being with a fixed identity. This is the understanding of the subject present in much of the literature that argues against multicultural education. See Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: The Free Press, 1991); E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987); Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Student's (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987); and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America (Knoxville, Tenn.: Whittle Direct Books, 1991).
16. By the fixed unified subject I mean the humanist modernist notion of the subject as a conscious and rational being with a fixed identity. This is the understanding of the subject present in much of the literature that argues against multicultural education. See Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: The Free Press, 1991); E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987); Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Student's (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987); and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America (Knoxville, Tenn.: Whittle Direct Books, 1991).
17. I claim my identity as Mexicana/Chicana because I was born and raised in Mexico and did not move to the United States until I was an adult. Although I come from a "mixed" Anglo-American and Mexican family, my first ethnic identification has always been Mexican. Once in the United States, especially in graduate school, I became involved in Chicana/o politics. It is, therefore, through my political involvement that I claim a Chicana identity.
18. Conocimiento y Experiencia means Knowledge and Experience.
19. Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 148.
20. See, for example, D'Souza, Illiberal Education.
21. Mohanty, "Cartographies of Struggle," 10.
22. Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers, 6.
23. Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers, 1.
24. Fran Leeper Buss is an Anglo-American friend of Mara Elena Lucas who recorded Lucas's history and edited her testimonio. What differentiates Leeper Buss's editorship of Lucas life story from similar projects is the friendship and political connections between Leeper Buss and Lucas. This testimonial is a joint effort, and in Forged Under the Sun, Lucas's voice is not lost.
25. Lucas, Forged Under the Sun, 31.
26. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, "De/Colonization and the Politics of Discourse in Women's Autobiographical Practices," in Smith and Watson, De/Colonizing the Subject, xvii.
27. Shari Benstock, "Authorizing the Autobiographical," in The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobiographical Writing, ed. Shari Benstock (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988) 10-33.
28. Susan Stanford Friedman, "Women's Autobiographical Selves: Theory and Practice," in Benstock, The Private Self, 39.
29. Smith and Watson, "De/Colonization and Politics of Discourse," xxi.
30. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 38.
31. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 38.
32. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other, 94, emphasis original.
33. Anne E. Goldman, Take My Word: Autobiographical Innovations of Ethnic American Working Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), xxii.
34. Beverly, ́The Margin at the Center,́ 103.
35. Fran Leeper Buss, introduction to Forged Under the Sun, 3, emphasis added.
36. Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers, 1.
37. Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers, 211, emphasis added.
38. Lucas, Forged Under the Sun, 70.
39. Lucas, Forged Under the Sun, 266.
40. Chela Sandoval, "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World," Genders 10 (1991): 1-24.
41. Sandoval, "U.S. Third World Feminism," 3.
42. Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 111.
43. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 191.
44. Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers, 10.
45. Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers, 12, 13.
46. Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers, 47.
47. Castillo, Massacre of the Dreamers, 51.
48. This does not mean that Castillo and her interviewers are implementing a theory acquired from Sandoval's article. Rather, Castillo's work reinforces Sandoval's position that differential oppositional consciousness generates from everyday forms of oppression.
49. Lucas, Forged Under the Sun, 279.
50. Lucas, Forged Under the Sun, 286, 287.
51. Lucas, Forged Under the Sun, 287.
52. The readings are: Patricia Hill Collins, "Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment," in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1990), 221-38; Lourdes Torres, "The Construction of the Self in U.S. Latina Autobiographies," in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra T. Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 271-87; and Claudia Salazar, "A Third World Woman's Text: Between the Politics of Criticism and Cultural Politics," in Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, ed. Sherna B. Gluck and Daphne Patai (New York Routledge, 1991), 93-106.
53. The readings are: Patricia Hill Collins, "Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment," in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1990), 221-38; Lourdes Torres, "The Construction of the Self in U.S. Latina Autobiographies," in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra T. Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 271-87; and Claudia Salazar, "A Third World Woman's Text: Between the Politics of Criticism and Cultural Politics," in Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, ed. Sherna B. Gluck and Daphne Patai (New York Routledge, 1991), 93-106.
54. The readings are: Patricia Hill Collins, "Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment," in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1990), 221-38; Lourdes Torres, "The Construction of the Self in U.S. Latina Autobiographies," in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra T. Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 271-87; and Claudia Salazar, "A Third World Woman's Text: Between the Politics of Criticism and Cultural Politics," in Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, ed. Sherna B. Gluck and Daphne Patai (New York Routledge, 1991), 93-106.
55. Dolores Delgado Bernal, "Learning and Living Pedagogies of the Home: The Mestiza Consciousness of Chicana Students" (paper submitted for review to the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education), 4.