Here are some prompts you may want to respond to for this week’s blog discussion:
- The snake is a complicated symbol. What cultural associations with snakes are you familiar with? How do you think Anzaldúa uses the figure of the snake in Chapter 3? What did you think about this?
- How does Anzaldúa seem to feel about spirituality? Are there things about white culture that she believes oppress spirituality? What did you think about this section of her essay (Ch. 3, pp. 44+)?
- How does Anzaldúa imagine a new Mestiza consciousness in Chapter 7? Where does this consciousness spring from, and what does she imagine it will be like? What are your reactions to this section of the essay?
- What does Anzaldúa say about men and machismo in Chapter 7? How do you respond?
- What Anzaldúa’s and/or Moraga’s views on queerness and why do these seem to be important?
- Choose one of the poems by Cherrie Moraga on the syllabus to interpret and discuss in more detail.
After reading “Loving In The War Years,” I was hit with a wave of emotions. In particular the lines: “Loving you has this kind if desperation to it, like do or die, I having eyed you from the first time you made the decision to move from your stool to live dangerously” (lines 20-25). I really placed a lot of emphasis on this upon my first read through. To live dangerously was what struck me most. And that this apparent “danger” was not from the ongoing war outside, but rather from confessions of love and acting upon these overcoming emotions as a way to connect. To desire human connection so deeply, you forget about the war you are suffering through. To consider the impact of love and to act on any hint of it before death. Continuing, the poem moves us as readers through a “smoky mood into the piano bar” whilst bombs explode surrounding the seemingly serene setting. This immediate contrast creates feelings of melancholy and want. This idea of a broken world seems to be only an additional detail to the desperation being experienced. I also really enjoyed the lines, “All on the hunch that in our exchange of photos of old girlfriends, names of cities and memories back in the states…” (lines 26-30). I loved the addition of these mundane details holding so much power over the creation of something as complex as love. To think that in the action of compiling all of these items and details we will expand the horizon in which we allow ourselves to feel and experience love. To finish, the last stanza of lines does a great job in continuing this feeling of melancholy and overall anguish towards such a connection. “You and I maintaining this war time morality where being queer and female is as rude as we can get.” It completely changes the original trajectory of the story and caught me by surprise on my first read through. But, after a few more reads it fit perfectly. The continuous theme of want and need perfectly portrays what it means to love in a time like that.
Cherríe Moraga’s passage titled La Guera shows a different perspective on being torn between two cultures/identities, than the one we have been reading and discussing from Anzaldúa. Moraga is biologically half ‘gringa’ (anglo) and half ‘chicana’, whilst Anzaldúa is fully, 100% Chicana, but feels an identity split through growing up near the border of Texas and Mexico. Moraga goes through life with the narrative that being white is better because of the privileges it offers, and being white-passing, she hardly ever thought about the other half of her culture until late in life. This presents the question of if you are aware of ways you’ve been oppressed. By remembering the pain and suffering it brought you, then by reasonable deduction, Moraga claims that discrediting someone else’s oppression (that we personally can’t relate to) should become unfeasible.
Although, it is not a perfect idea, which she very-well knows, and people forget their oppression and oppress all the time. As well, people oppress their own minority group all the time because of generalized ideas of what is ‘normal’. I personally struggled (and continue to struggle) with my own identification as a bisexual woman. First, I had to discover what being gay even was, and why it was such a big deal if these two, same-sexed people wanted to be in love. I had to change my mentality and push against the homophobia that is instilled in our society, and therefore somewhere, subconsciously within me. Then, I had to question what kind of ‘gay’ I ‘wanted’ to be. Was a lesbian, pan, bi, or something entirely different? I went three years saying “I’m not sure but I’m definitely queer.” I think my hesitancy came from a deeply embedded biphobia. In the straight community, you’re weird and unaccepted, and in the gay community, your struggles couldn’t be that difficult because you could always ‘pass’ as a straight person. I still have a lot of personal reflection to work through in order to articulate this in the best way possible.
Discussion on “Later, She Met Joyce” (Blog post 2)
I loved this poem and have so many thoughts about it, but this is my first time reading anything by Cherríe Moraga, so I don’t think I’m actually able to expand on my thoughts very much. Right off the bat he poem very much reminded me of Sula by Toni Morrison: two young girls growing apart with age, more because of society’s and familys’ influences rather than solely their personalities or interests. The other reason it reminded me of Sula was because of the vivid voices we hear, especially near the end— accents and slang in phrases such as “Cath-lic” or “Whadchu say, man?” I’m not sure if there’s a particular word for that form of writing, but I always love the attention to detail on the authors’ part that it conveys. For me its a form of logos in the sense that it proves the author has lived in these societies before, they’ve experienced language and communication on a personal level— they’re not just writing about a culture they’ve never truly lived in. I love how it forces you to hear the characters’s voice and not just read their dialogue.
When I began the poem I was for the most part able to predict how the poem would end, just because it reminded me so much of the way girlhood vs. culture is treated in Sula. As I was reading I picked up on themes structures similar to myths we still use in modern cultures globally: an outside force taking people apart and/or keeping them apart, unrequited love, youth and secrets. Because we’re discussing myth so much in both classes I kept trying to pin down a specific story that was being references, and of course theres many that allusions could be made to, but I realized that I couldn’t think of any ancient myths that involve two women or girls, rather than two men or a woman and man. The lines “first time,” “so this is love,” and the repetition of “in other people’s eyes” stood out to me as central themes of the poem and of romance stories from a female’s point of view in general. I’d love to explore more myths that center on one or two women in a positive way rather than the usual presentation of mythological woman: Eve, Malinche, Penelope. They all seem to be some kind of romance object or blamed woman, so I love that in stories written after the second wave of feminism we have the chance to create new female-centric myths.
There’s so many interesting themes to be explored when a story is written from the point of view of a girl or woman, and I think that Moraga captues that very well in this poem, especially with the line “in other people’s eyes.” As I said before, women in male-centric myths, even when written kindly, are still some sort of romantic or sexual object mostly valued for her looks. Even when she is valued for something deeper than physical beauty, it is often a personality trait than men value: politeness, obedience, maternal instincts. Joyce goes against all that society would value— she does not continue her education, she wears the “shiny clothes,” she speaks with slang and a heavy accent. Cecilia is the stereotypical woman that a patriarchal society values, but she doesn’t use her privilege against Joyce. When she is called “a fat half-breed,” Cecilia simply says that that’s “in other people’s eyes.” Their friendship and childhood clearly overrides any prejudices that their culture has tried to put on them, for Cecilia there doesn’t even seem to be a question of her love for her friend, whether it be platonic or romantic. This ideal isn’t something that seems to be prevalent in male-centered ancient myths, which often focus on physical heroism or obtaining a “perfect” woman as some kind of reward. This poem is such a wonderful example of how literature as a whole can benefit from woman-led stories and placing value on girlhood.