Yo Sola Aprendi Analysis

Genaro Padilla, author of the article Yo Sola Aprendi: Mexican Women’s Personal Narratives from Nineteenth-Century California, expands upon a discussion first chronicled by the historian, H. H. Bancroft and his assistants, who collected oral histories from Spanish Mexican women in the 1870’s American West. Bancroft’s collection, however, did not come from this time period, but closer to the 1840s, a time where Mexican heritage still played a strong presence throughout most of California. These accounts, collected from many different women, in many various positions and lifestyles, shows just how muted the Mexican female voice could be during this era.

Padilla, wanting to reach a depth to these narrative-autobiographies that not even Bancroft

Padilla accentuates the amount of suppression that these women lived through, notably how even those that did get their voices out happened to always be obscured by men. These narratives, often passed from one person to the other through oral means, are meant to show the authenticity of the claims made by women throughout the years that they are just as capable as men. One obvious issue with these accounts, however, is that they are passed down through oral dictation. Not only is misinterpretation an issue when it comes to vocal recollection, but so is the actuality that these expressed events may not have been that retained within the woman’s mind. Some of these anecdotes come from older women recounting something that happened to them in their early lives, leading to a possible misconstruction of believed events. Further, Padilla mentions that several times a woman would recount a story, and a man would come along and ‘tamper’ with it to make it more fitting to a patriarchal society. If these documents, even somewhat the ones in oral form, have been meddled with, one must ask the question of if they are still considered to be reliable, sincere, sources. While the research conducted and the information, besides the aforementioned points, is well thought out and analyzed, the fact that these sources could be misinterpreted put somewhat of a restraint