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  • Troubled Memories: Iconic Mexican Women and the Traps of Representation by Oswaldo Estrada
  • Liliana Wendorff
Troubled Memories: Iconic Mexican Women and the Traps of Representation SUNY Press, 2018 by Oswaldo Estrada

This critical study focuses on the representation of Malinche, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Leona Vicario, the soldaderas of the Mexican Revolution, and Frida Kahlo in diverse literary and cultural works of the 21st century. These women are symbols of national identity associated with different periods of Mexican history, and symbolize cultural values associated with female archetypes that appear in both high and low culture. Estrada believes that the literary representation of these female icons captures current social ideas and tensions, as well as cultural problems. His work addresses the role of memory and discourse, the perpetuation of otherness, textual experimentation, and gender and identity, among other important themes and topics.

In Chapter 1, Estrada argues that the story of Malinche's life remains uncertain in the 21st century. This legendary figure has been presented in dissimilar ways: as a traitor, a bridge between Spain and the New World, a treacherous woman and a whore. In Amor y conquista, Marisol Martín del Campo depicts Malinche as bewitched by the Spanish conquistadors. Although she is mistreated by Cortés, she "desires him beyond words." Estrada argues that Malinche's discourse in this work is not credible because she speaks with a sugary discourse, like a soap opera character. Laura Esquivel's Malinche is also problematic in the sense that it lacks a contestatory point of view. Her book is filled with graphic details about Malinche and Cortés as if she were incapable of controlling her sexual instincts. Estrada concludes that Esquivel's fiction of passive otherness does not resolve unanswered questions regarding Mexico's identity, inferiority complex, and coloniality. The same occurs in Fanny del Rio's La verdadera historia de Malinche, in which she is represented as doing everything for Cortés and "wishes to die in his arms." Not only does the language of love prevails, but also her sexuality prevents her from becoming an empowered woman of political resistance in a male-dominated world. Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda's play La Malinche, on the other hand, attempts to paint an empowered woman who is writing her own life, as an interpreter that manipulates information for both the Mexicas and the Spaniards. For the most part, Estrada concludes, these authors relegate Malinche to a marginal scenario where she cannot overcome her otherness.

In the next chapter the critic analyzes works published between 2007 and 2010: Mónica Zagal's (pseudonym used by Héctor Zagal) La venganza de Sor Juana, José Luis Gómez's El beso de la virreina, Mónica Lavín's, Yo, la peor, and Kyra Galván's Los indecibles pecados de Sor Juana. Zagal pays attention to Sor Juana's physical attributes and her amorous disenchantments, coinciding with other 20th- and 21st-century portrayals of the nun as an anomaly, as too feminine or too masculine, either ugly or beautiful, but never as an ordinary person. She is described as a rara avis for being intelligent but also for the description of her body. In Gómez's novel, Sor Juana is a sexual temptress who seduces multiple men in and outside the convent. Both Lavín and Galván suggest a lesbian orientation and the latter actually proposes she gave birth to a daughter, without paying much attention to her philosophical essays, her love poems and plays. With convincing textual evidence, Estrada argues that the authors who expose Sor Juana's sexuality have the intention to humanize and demystify her but fail to situate the nun within a "possible world" of fiction that actually makes sense. [End Page 301]

Chapter 3 deals with Leona Vicario, considered "The Mother of Mexican Independence." She is a mythical figure because her transgressions have an ethical motivation and hers is a story of feminine empowerment. Focusing on three novels published in 2010: Celia del Palacio's Leona, Carlos Pascual's La insurgenta, and Eugenio Aguirre's Leona Vicario: La insurgente, Estrada argues that...

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