Engendering Immigration in Chicano/a Fiction: patriarchal foundational narratives and women's search for self-knowledge

• Autores: María Herrera-Sobek
• Localización: Evolving origins, transplanting cultures: literary Legacies of the news Americans / coord. por Laura Alonso Gallo; Antonia Domínguez Miguela (aut.), 2002, ISBN 978-84-95699-70-1, págs. 201-211
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This essay posits the importance of gender in the construction of Mexican immigrant narratives. An overview of Chicano/a literary production demonstrates the importance of the topic of immigration. Many Chicano novels structure their plot with the immigrant parents or grandparents initiating the action by their decision to emigrate to the United States. A close textual analysis of these foundational novels yields important information on the differences extant between Chicanos/as vis-a-vis the strategies taken to represent the immigrant experience. Chicano writers such as Jose Antonio Villarreal, Emesto Galarza, and Edmundo Villasenor begin the saga of the immigrant experience with the migration of the parents. Frequently this migration begins during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917. Chicana novels, for the most part, do not take the Mexican Revolution as their motive for emigration. Chicanas posit various reasons for Mexican women emigrating to the United States: they may accompany a relative, they may marry a U.S. citizen, and so forth. Oftentimes the main message of the immigrant saga is self-knowledge and personal growth as oppose to the establishment of a family clan as is common with Chicano immigrant novels. This study demostrates the importance gender plays in structuring Mexican immigrant narratives. Chicano narratives demonstrate a patriarchal component in their desire to establish a clan, a family whereas Chicana immigrant narratives veer toward personal growth and self-understanding.