Searching for Mother: Chicana Writers Revise and Renew Malinche and Guadalupe

Chicana writers currently assume the role of border culturalists in order to present alternative views of female figures perpetuated by histories, chronicles, myths, and other narrations motivated by imperial ideology and patriarchy. Two such female figures in Mexican-American culture are La Virgen de Guadalupe and La Malinche, archetypes that emerged in Mexico during the Spanish conquest period and that traditionally became dichotomous constructions of virgin and whore, Virgin Mary and Eve, and protector and traitor, respectively. However, contemporary Chicana feminist writers, such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros and Pat Mora, not only revise traditional images of Malinche and Guadalupe, but also offer alternative constructions based, in part, on oral tradition and matriarchal authorities. Their writings question patriarchally-inscribed images of Malinche and Guadalupe that are steeped in colonial ideology and religion and present alternative constructions that depict these figures as ones that resist and struggle rather than ones that are static and oppressed by creating them as powerful emblems of Mother--Malinche as Historical Mother and Guadalupe as Spiritual Mother. For Chicana writers, textuality is connected to materiality and contributes to identity formation for them and other Chicana women. With their reinventions of the archetypes of Malinche and Guadalupe, the Chicana writers presented in this dissertation uncover a cultural matrilineal legacy that may contribute to identity formation for them and other women who live in a contemporary world.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Immediate Access

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2004

Author dc:creator

• Maldonado, Diane L.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Linda A. Kinnahan
• Bernard F. Beranek
• Mark Frisch

• Chicana
• Guadalupe
• Malinche

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/858

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dsc.duq.edu:etd-1874