The Road to Healing: Pilgrimage and the Vietnam War in Let Their Spirits Dance

Current research on pilgrimage shows that travel in search for clarification or quest is drawn from either traditional practices within established religions or from rituals that can be melded with new contemporary forms of spirituality. Studies show that pilgrimage is therapeutic in biological, psychological, social, and spiritual ways. When one thinks of pilgrimage, religion generally comes to mind, however, secular pilgrimages have emerged as a viable means of connecting deeply in an existential manner. Upon completion of the journey, pilgrims generally experience life as significantly more meaningful and their psychological or spiritual woe is overcome. In the novel, Let Their Spirits Dance (2003) by Chicana author Stella Pope Duarte, the Ramírez family has lost a loved one in the Vietnam War. They have never healed from this tragedy and some 27 years later, Alicia, the matriarch of the family, claims to hear voices in the night that she believes to be of Jesse, her dead son. This study draws on current anthropological scholarship on pilgrimage to analyze the theme of pilgrimage and its' therapeutic capabilities in the Ramírez family.

In the Catholic tradition pilgrims embark on journeys to a specific place with the purpose of venerating it, in order to ask for supernatural aid or to fulfil a religious obligation (Dubisch and Winkelman xiii).¹ A less overtly religious definition of pilgrimage is simply put as "outer action with inner meaning" (Clift 12). Both definitions are particularly helpful in understanding the relationship between the Ramírez family's journey and pilgrimage. Alicia, an extremely religious woman is motivated by a religious calling to touch her son's name on the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, D.C. She declares: "I vow this day, before all the hosts of Heaven, before God, una manda. I'll get to the Wall before I die and touch my son's name. If it's the last thing I do on this earth, I promise I'll touch Jesse's name!" (93). Her daughter, Teresa, the protagonist-narrator, devoid of a religious obligation, is experiencing her own need for healing, still mourning her brother's death, and accompanies her mother on this pilgrimage, along with several other family members and friends. Alicia insists that the whole family go as well as Jesse's fellow veteran friends. What begins as one mother's quest to fulfil a promise, becomes a family's collective search for healing, and results in a search for both an individual and national identity.

According to sociologist Raymond Michalowski and cultural anthropologist Jill Dubish, pilgrimage begins with the idea of a journey, and that traveling to a different or special place will bring about a change in one's life, in one's viewpoint, in one's state of being. The physical journey is thus paralleled by a spiritual or psychological one. Both the journey and destination are important and incorporate a mixture of religious and secular motives (163). Almost any journey may be termed "a pilgrimage" these days, its meaning defined by inner feelings and motivation rather than by external institutionalized forms (Dubish and Winkelman xvii). While many kinds of places can become the object of a pilgrimage, such sites whether religious or secular, tend to have what anthropologist James Preston has termed "spiritual magnetism" (Preston 33). Whereas some pilgrimage sites are associated with major mythological or historical events within a specific religious tradition, or are established spontaneously because of miraculous occurrences at the site, in some cases, a pilgrimage site was not intended or foreseen, such as is the case with the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, D.C. Since its inauguration in 1982, it has become an important pilgrimage destination for veterans and nonveterans alike (Dubish and Winkelman xix). For example, the "Run for the Wall" that started in 1989 is the largest annual pilgrimage to the Memorial Wall consisting of Vietnam Veterans, friends and supporters all traveling on motorcycles.

Turning now to the novel Let Their Spirits Dance, Teresa believes she is taking her mother on this trip to fulfill a vow, but...