Chicana literature
[1] According to the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society, "Chicana feminist writings helped to develop a discourse in opposition to the Eurocentric frameworks."
Many writers, like Adalijiza Sosa Riddell, wrote about the experiences they had to go through, as well as the issues of the gender and sexuality, which came with the reclamation of the historical and cultural figures.
[6] As part of the movement, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which is now known as the United Farmworkers.
Reies Lopez Tijerina later organized the Alianza Federal de Mercedes, a group which emphasized Chicano history and campaigned to restore land to those who lost it during the Mexican–American War.
[8] The Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society claims that, "One of the best-known Latina feminists is Gloria Anzaldúa, author of numerous writings, including Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.
As a lesbian Chicana writer, Anzaldúa has produced work that shows the clear intersectionality of gender, sexuality, and the social construction of racial identity.
[10] La Virgen de Guadalupe, the patron saint of the Americas, was recognized by the Catholic Church, soon after she was discovered by an indigenous man, Juan Diego.
According to the Encyclopedia of Global Religion, "During and after the conquest, Catholicism was used to justify the physical, emotional, and spiritual enslavement of the indigenous people…[who] were dehumanized and lived without hope.
Popular tradition tells us that in the midst of this devastation, [Our Lady of Guadalupe] was viewed as a miracle that helped restore a dying people's dignity and desire to live."
[11] In some Chicanas' works, including the well-known essay of Cherríe Moraga, Loving in the War Years, La Virgen de Guadalupe symbolizes the male repression of women's sexuality and independence.
The Official Mexican narrative depicts Doña Marina as a traitor, and she is blamed, by many, for the fall of the Aztecs and the success of the Spanish Conquest.
Certain contemporary Chicana writers have taken on La Malinche, re-writing her story as one of a woman who had little choice in her role as Cortés's interpreter (she was sold to him as a slave), and who served as a "mediator between the Spanish and indigenous peoples.
"[13] Sandra Cisneros has used this modern La Llorona story that is "Woman Hollering Creek" to give a "voice to the violated Latina mother who struggles against domestic violence and economic and emotional dependency on men.
Chicana writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldúa, Helena Maria Viramontes and Ana Castillo "have undertaken to create not only rich and immensely variegated accounts of women's experience, but alternative versions of Chicano culture.
In modern Llorona stories, the male lover's dishonesty is emphasized, as he is revealed as "a husband who not only deprives her of basic economic needs, but is also a slob, an emotional invalid, an adulterer, and, worst of all, a batterer".
