Toward a Latina Feminism of the Americas: Repression and Resistance in Chicana and Mexicana Literature

Afterword

afterword Necesitamos teorías that will rewrite history using race, class, gender and ethnicity as categories of analysis, theories that cross borders, that blur boundaries—new kinds of theories with new theorizing methods. gloria anzaldúa My project or “story” began in 1990 as a graduate student. As a woman I wanted to tell the story of brave Chicanas and Mexicanas who battled patriarchy. I hoped to describe the challenges, the struggles, the successes and sometimes failures of women who resist accepting the role that previous generations have handed down to them. I wanted to tell the story of the brave women who write about once-forbidden subjects and who have brought to life rich literary characters who question traditional, narrow interpretations of womanhood. While part of my early quest took place in Mexico City, the latter part of my search took place in Málaga, Spain. The beginning of the story stresses the importance of building support networks in the academy as a survival strategy; the continuing story emphasizes the same message. In the more than a decade that has passed, I was hired to a tenure-track position and earned tenure, promotion, and sabbatical. I learned a great deal about myself through the experience of living abroad, and the places that I lived—Mexico and Spain—connected me on a personal level to my history. As this project comes to a close, I have reflected on the development of this work and of myself as a scholar. My theory, my modes of resistance, contained in the form of a book, are an ac- 90 toward a latina feminism of the americas cumulation of my own experience as a Chicana in a variety of international settings. By melding my story with the stories of the literary characters I have discussed here and their acts of resistance, the resistance has become the method. If theory is the lived experience, then the writers and the literary texts that I engage in these pages are aiding readers in their own processes of self-discovery and self-creation. This Afterword, then, braids these processes together with my own journey— all threads in the variegated and larger collective tapestry of women of color in the academy. In speaking out against silence and marginalization, our very existence and survival become a form of resistance. teacher When people ask me what I do for a living, I respond: “I teach.” The reality is, however, that as a tenured university professor, teaching is only one of several responsibilities, administrative and otherwise. Yet, of all that I do in my position, it is teaching that has always given me the most joy. In my naïve moments, I believe that all university professors do what they do because of the joy that teaching offers. What is it precisely about teaching that makes it a blissful experience? Part of the answer is that, as a teacher, I am also a student. Teaching is a natural career choice for a lover of learning. Yet, societal expectations of women of color would not place us in the role of university professor. As a student, I felt liberated as I learned, through the various academic disciplines but mostly through literature, my major field of study, about worlds unfamiliar to me. Learning to think critically and to express myself through the written word was liberating. When I chose to pursue a PhD and a career in academia, my desire was and continues to be to assist students in their own liberation. The classroom or community that I aim to create is certainly Freirian based. I was introduced to Paulo Freire in graduate school in a course on theories of teaching; since then, student-centered teaching is all I have ever practiced. Even in afterword 91 large lecture courses, I encourage dialogue and recognize student experience with course material as the point of reference for dialogue.1 Being a first-generation college student, I was not raised with a familiarity of the culture of the academy. In order to survive, first-generation college students are forced to learn how to function in this unknown culture. While I brought with me my own set of cultural values, those values seemed to contradict what I would have to learn: a set of unwritten rules. If one does not learn the rules of the academy, one becomes vulnerable to immobility and anonymity. scholar After being...