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Ana Castillo’s So Far from God (1993), begins its tale by immediately immersing the reader in the full drama that is typical of a Spanish soap opera describing the lives of five Hispanic women. The oldest daughter, Esperanza, wants to make a name for herself and succeeds in doing so by leaving Tome. Fe wants a normal life that she will never be able to have in Sofia’s household. Caridad is a simple soul that would have been content with her high school sweetheart had he not cheated on her. The youngest daughter, La Loca Santa, dies at age three and is resurrected to pray for the people. Lastly, Sofia turns out to be the strongest of the women in the novel by taking a stand for what she believes is right. Castillo uses Sofia and her four daughters to express her negative and distrustful view of patriarchy and oppression of women through class, gender and sexuality.
Castillo first shows the reader her distrust of patriarchy and its vertical structures through La Loca Santa’s death. The first structure under scrutiny here is the Catholic Church. After La Loca awakens she throws herself into the air and lands on the top of the Church, saying that those below her carry the same scent that she had smelled while in hell. With Loca high above the others she can be seen as a “substation” for a new Chicana Christ figure (Delgadillo 895). She tells those gathered below that she has been sent back to pray for them so that they would be able to see their Creator in heaven. Father Jerome pleads with her to come down so that the congregation could pray for her. She then reminds him that it is she that was sent to pray for them. With La Loca in the position of a Christ figure of the system, the structure of the system, in this case religion,...
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...Far From God. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993. Print.
Christopher, Renny. "A State of Courage and Wisdom...Not an Uncontrollable Participation in Society: Ana Castillo's Novel of Feminist and Working-Class Resistance." Class of Its Own: Re-Envisioning American Labor Fiction. (2008): 189-200. Print.
Delgadillo, Theresa. "Forms of Chicana Feminist Resistance: Hybrid Spirituality in Ana Castillo's So Far From God."Modern Fiction Studies. 44.4 (1998): 888-914. Delgadillo, Theresa. "Forms of Chicana Feminist Resistance: Hybrid Spirituality in Ana Castillo's So Far From God."Modern Fiction Studies. 44.4 (1998): 888-914. .
Rodriguez, Ralph. "Chicana/o Fiction from Resistance to Contestation: The Role of Creation in Ana Castillo's So Far From God."MELUS. 25.2 (2000): 63-87. Print.
Blackwell was able to conduct with the pioneering Chicana activist and theorist Anna NietoGomez, along with the members of Las Hijas de Cuauhtémoc. She talks about the families of Anna NietoGomez, Corinne Sanchez, and also Sylvia Castillo; and what brought them to activism. She uses Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge to help understand the ways in which the Chicanas have been omitted from the social histories of the Chicano and women’s movements.
Doña Guadalupe is a woman of great strength and power, power and strength which she draws from her devout faith and her deep and loving compassion for her family, and power and strength which is passed down to her children. “‘Well, then, come in,’ she said, deciding that she could be handle this innocent-girl-stealing coyote inside. On going into the long tent, Salvador felt like he’d entered the web of a spider, the old woman was eyeing him so deliberately” (360). Doña Guadalupe is a very protective woman, which is extremely speculative when it comes to her children, this is especially true when it comes to boys, because she has not gone this far only for all of her hard work to be ruined by a no good boy. This shows how protective she is, she loves her family, and especially her kids so much that they themselves must pass her test before being able to pass on to her children. “The newborns were moving, squirming, reaching out for life. It was truly a sign from God” (58). Doña Guadalupe is also a very devout and faithful person. She sees God in everything and in everyone and by that fact, what she sees and who she sees is true, and she tries to be a model of clairvoyance for the family. “Doña Guadalupe put the baby’s little feet in a bowel of warm water, and the child clinging to his mother. He never cried, listening to her heartbeat, the same music that he’d heard from inside the womb” (57). Finally, Doña Guadalupe is very passionate which allows for a great model upon which her children follow. This further shows how she is clearly th...
In So Far From God, Ana Castillo uses Magical Realism, a technique in writing fiction that fuses the real and the fantastic, to empower Sofi, the novel's protagonist, to rebel against cultural inequities, religious oppression, and political establishments. After La Loca’s magical resurrection, Father Jerome, a male figure who represents the Catholic church, attributes La Loca’s unexplained reawakening to the devil. However, Sofi, La Loca’s mother, refuses his interpretation and regards her daughter’s resurrection as a miracle of God. A sign that foreshadows Sofi and La Loca rebellion against the male-dominated church. Interestingly, instead of going to the church, people come from all over the region in hopes of receiving La Loca blessing—an
Figueredo, Maria L. "The Legend of La Llorona: Excavating and (Re) Interpreting the Archetype of the Creative/Fertile Feminine Force", Latin American Narratives and Cultural Identity, 2004 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York. pp232-243.
The main character in “Woman Hollering Creek” is Cleόfilas Enriqueta DeLeόn Hernández, a woman who leaves her home in Mexico to marry a man, Juan Pedro Martinez Sánchez, in Texas. Flowing behind Cleόfilas’ new house in Texas, is a stream named Woman Hollering. Cleόfilas imagines her marriage to be filled with joy and love. To Cleόfilas’ surprise, Juan Pedro is a vile husband that is both physically and verbally abusive. Cisneros brings attention to a recurrent issue within the Chicana community. According to The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, “The majority of abused women, (75%) of Mexican-American women reported spousal abuse”
Using both English and Spanish or Spanglish the author Gloria Anzaldua explores the physical, cultural, spiritual, sexual and psychological meaning of borderlands in her book Borderlands/La Frontera: A New Mestiza. As a Chicana lesbian feminist, Anzaldua grew up in an atmosphere of oppression and confusion. Anzaldua illustrates the meaning of being a “mestiza”. In order to define this, she examines herself, her homeland and language. Anzaldúa discusses the complexity of several themes having to do with borderlands, mestizaje, cultural identity, women in the traditional Mexican family, sexual orientation, la facultad and the Coatlicue state. Through these themes, she is able to give her readers a new way of discovering themselves. Anzaldua alerts us to a new understanding of the self and the world around us by using her personal experiences.
Torres, Hector Avalos. 2007. Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers. U.S.: University of New Mexico press, 315-324.
Family is one of the most important institutions in society. Family influences different aspects of a person’s life, such as their religion, values, morals and behavior. Unfortunately, problems may arise when an individual’s belief system or behavior does not coincide with that of family standards. Consequently, individuals may be forced to repress their emotions or avoid acting in ways that that are not acceptable to the family. In the novel The Rain God, written by Arturo Islas, we are presented with a story about a matriarchal family that deals with various conflicts. One major internal conflict is repression. Throughout the novel the characters act in strange ways and many of the family members have internal “monsters” that represent the past that they are repressing. In his article, “The Historical Imagination in Arturo Islas’s The Rain God and Migrant Souls”, Antonio C. Marquez’s implicitly asserts a true idea that The Rain God is a story about repression. Marquez’s idea can be supported from an analysis of secondary sources and a reading of the primary text.
It is influenced by her grandmother, Esperanza Ortega’s life story and her experience from when she fled from Mexico to California. While it may be a fictional story, it is personally inspired by a close family member who lived through similar challenges. In addition, I appreciate how the author has done extensive historically based social research to allow the story to be as authentic as possible. Moreover, I chose this novel because it takes place during the Great Depression period focusing on the agricultural labor camps. I have no previous knowledge specifically in this area, and would like to learn and understand how this certain place and era affected people’s lives, society, environment, and
Besides the stigma that La Loca experiences in society due to her supernatural mystery, she becomes exposed to the power of the Chicana cultural beliefs, which forces her to seek community in the natural world rather than human society. La Loca is able to view without prejudice how women and men have strayed far from the light of God. The community views La Loca as the ‘devil’s’ child and excludes her from being capable of exhibiting human characteristics. Consequently, this contributes to La Loca’s borderland
In Ana Castillo’s, So Far From God, the novel focuses on the character Sofi and her four daughters. Castillo narrates the women’s life situations all whilst portraying the negative effects of a male dominant society and the manipulation of women. Sofi is an independent single mother who has completely devoted herself to her daughters. She taught her daughters how to survive without a dominant male in their life, although throughout the novel they come into contact with several men who lead them into severe situations. The unjust deaths of her daughters led her to becoming a leader of her community. The third eldest, Fe, was a victim of an unjust work environment. The youngest, La Loca, was a victim of AIDS.
Writing in the 20th century was great deal harder for a Chicano then it was for a typical American at this time. Although that did not stop this author, Sandra Cisneros. One of her famous novels, Woman Hollering Creek was a prime example of how a combined culture: Mexican-Americans, could show their pride and identity in this century. In conjunction, gave the opportunity for women to speak their voice and forever change the culture of Latino/a markets. Not only did it express identity/gender roles of women and relationships, but using these relationships to combine the cultures of Mexican and American into a hybrid breed. This novel, should have been a view-point for the future to show that there is more to life than just gender and race. Concluding this, the articles that helps define this is “The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature” and “What is called Heaven”.
Bergmann, Emilie. "Abjection and Ambiguity: Lesbian Desire in Bemberg's "Yo, la peor de todas." Hispanisms and Homosexualities. Ed. Sylvia Molloy and Robert McKee Irwin. Durham: Duke UP, 1998.
She is the one that refuses to oblige to societal orders. She is the “Shadow-Beast” (38) with “Chicana identity grounded in the Indian woman’s history of resistance” (43). Although alienated physically, Anzaldua is “immobilized” (43) mentally the more confined she becomes in a culture engulfed in pure oppression. She claims her “shadow-beast” as the depiction of her highly wanted independence as an individual human being, which eventually forces her to leave her family behind to find herself separately from the “intrinsic nature buried under the personality that had been imposed” (38) for people like Anzaldua for many years. Her push for rebellion sets a voice for the silenced anger and pure resistance against the ostracism of herself, her family, culture, and the white-washed society she has been born into. To be the only Chicana, lesbian, and rebellious woman in her family is considered sinful, as women, according to Anzaldua, in Mexico only have “three directions she could turn: to the church as a nun, to the streets as a prostitute, or to the home as a mother” (39). Noticing that women are culturally restricted to these roles, Anzaldua creates the opposite role for herself claiming to take the “fourth choice” by “entering the world by way of education and career and becoming self-autonomous persons,” (39), which she uses to her advantage to transform the prolonged oppression into her long awaited freedom to live as an openly queer woman
Many reviews have been written on Julia Alvarez since she is a Dominican Diaspora, a Jew who lived outside of Israel, who wrote in a Latina perspective in the country of Uni...