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These poems have been able to share a couple of points but have the same outcome. One of the things that they focus on, is women. This topic has become very important in our class discussions because we have the opportunity to listen to different points of view from my classmates. In the poem “La Madre de Azltan” it mentions how men perceive women and the traditional way of how men are “superior” than women. As the poem mentions, “No woman can expect nor demand to be thoroughly accepted as equal in a man’s eyes, nor be given equal recognition.” This quote shows the issues women have to deal with and how it is very difficult for them to be seen equal in many circumstances. One of the messages that this poem is trying to give out is that in order for men to start treating women different, they first need to be confident in themselves and realize that they can be seen as much more than what they are constantly judged as. It is crucial for them to realize that they can be independent and that they do not need a man to give them a bright future. As mentioned in the poem, “Man cannot change his attitude toward woman until the woman perceives her deep psychological self as independent and asserted from man.” This is another quote that states that women need to make that big step in order for a change to happen. (246)
ReplyDeleteBruno Morales
Prior to reading these poems, I had no clue as to how sexist the Chicano Movement had become. It is really quite disgusting, to fight for equality, but to completely ignore women and their voice to the cause. Like how Enriquieta Longeauxy Vasquez says on page 29 of "The women of la Raza", "As a woman who has been faced with living as a member of the Mexican- American minority group, as a breadwinner and a mother raising children, living in housing projects... I felt this as quite a low blow.". I also saw their gross mistreatment as a low blow, not only to the mothers involved in the movement, but to all women in general. I am glad that these women stood up for themselves in quite a difficult time, since most of them could not speak due to them being in a double minority in the 1960's. Even though most women did not have access to basic liberties they have today, some women still managed to gain an education and even thrive in a toxic, racist and sexist enviornment. All that being said, I believe that women deserve more credit with their involvement in the movement. Without women defending each other and getting each other to rallies, organizing mass strikes and protests would have turned out a lot worse.
ReplyDeleteMichael Gonzalez
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ReplyDeleteChicana or nor Chicana women have come a long way to be where they are, and deserve to be admired. It’s sad to see how in our actual times, women are still suffering from inequality, oppression, and violence. The readings about Chicanas opened my eyes to the harsh world they lived in and made me admire them for their constant, silent and later loud effort.
ReplyDeleteMy mom used to say, “Mi’ja, el hombre sera la cabeza de la casa pero la mujer el cuello” and when reading “The Women of La Raza” I realized my mom was not the only one that thought that, and that she was right about it. Women in the revolution not only fight next to the men, but they would do what they just could not, like the cooking, the cleaning, the nursing. Even though they were not as recognized, they held the military working. In other words, without them, nothing would be possible just like without the neck, the head would not be able to stand.
I learned about La Malinche a long time ago, when I was still in Mexico, and yes indeed she is thought to be seen as a traitor. Carmen Tafolla’s poem gave me a total different perpective. It gave me the feeling I had when watching Pocahontas, the Disney movie. La malinche might have had a dream that nobody else understood, that of having “another world” where two races would be seen as one, but Hernan Cortez steals that dream away when he takes her baby, this child with the most precious blood of a combination of razas, her world.
I found very interesting how chicana women had to stand alone. We see in “Crisis de Identidad, o ya no chingues” how Mexican American women are seen lower and somehow dirty as a cause of their common unfortunate situations; therefore, they had to stand alone, cry and wipe their tears alone, but more importantly they had to stand again alone which made them stronger.
All of these readings were very interesting and revealing of the silenced stories that I never heard of. I am proud to be chicana and a woman and one day el cuello.
Ingrid Davila
The Chicana Poetry was very important and really explained a lot. The Chicana poetry all shared similarities that eventually turned out with same outcome. In the poems, one specific part that I thought was important was how it focused a lot on the women culture. The women culture is hot debate even now in today’s society. There are a lot of different perspectives on women that should be discussed. For example, in “La Madre de Aztlan” it talks about how men look at women and how the men are the superior ones. I partially agree with this because I feel like a man is superior than a woman but a woman does have her rights and she should be independent. I say this because of the fact that I know some women feel like a man should take care of her and provide for her. I also do believe women should be equal and have equal rights as men do. Women used to deal with a lot back in the day and struggled every day. In the poem, it states that men should treat women different and with respect and I agree with this 100%. Women can be independent and they don’t need a man to provide for them. A woman can do whatever a man can do. I strongly believed in these poems because they all can relate to someone.
ReplyDeleteMichael Garcia
Today in Texas Chicana women have been recognized in political and social issues. The fact that these women stood up for themselves even when they were being mistreated with a sexist treatment while the movement. It’s very disappointing to know how women were treated even though the women were a vast majority of why things changed. This made some women not be active in the movement because according to ‘The woman of La Raza’, women fear ‘censorship’. These women would just live through hell because their husbands would come home and take out all of his anger on the women. Domestic violence was a real issue for women during the movement, and created divorces. These women had to suffer the torments from her family in that she has had to go out into a racist society as a provider and a mother. These women had to become strong in order to exist against the odds. Also, they became independent to demonstrate that women don’t need men to succeed in life. My mom always tells me, ‘estudia y se dependiente de ti misma no seas una mantenida.’ We live in a modern society where mostly men don’t have women under their control like their dogs. They are more open minded and somewhat comprehensively. This is something that we can be grateful for in our country.
ReplyDeleteStephanie Nicole Cantu
Women have come a long way since back in those days where they use to be beaten up from not having the privilege of working. I’ve learn a lot through this reading a lot and I’ve learn how to value more my role of women and value the fact that now women have the privilege of could vote and work. While reading “The Women of La Raza” made me realize that American women who has been faced with living as a member of the Mexican American minority group, as a breadwinner and a mother raising children, living in housing projects. Made me realize that I should take for granted the opportunity that I get off been able to study. Even more that women yes, they must obey their husband’s rules but not to the point where they have to stay in home and not help bring the profit to the house. In the poem of “La Madre de Aztlan” I learn that true women’s liberation must happen first in the mind of the women, because man cannot change their attitude toward woman until women perceives her deep psychological self as independent and assert from man. That is why women must play their role and follow but also show that they have rights.
ReplyDelete(Maria Leal)
"True women's liberation must happen first in the mind of the woman" this stanza alone was very powerful and empowering. I am very glad that i came across these poems because they have so much potential and in a way a demand for respect. As a Hispanic female, there have been time and moments in my life where i was constantly belittled, and it was a very frustrating thing and was just very difficult for me to be seen as someone who was not worth someones time. However, i learned to embrace my culture and my sex and to use that to my advantage to change the way i was being treated and that quote just goes a really long way. I think every woman should think like that and should never be belittled, if we put our mind to it, we can definitely make a difference. It all begins with us, hispanic females. The women before us have fought for us and got us to where we are now, and to this day, we continue to fight the same fight, and we are stringer than ever. We should continue to keep their legacy alive. All these poems are uniquely different but the results are the remotely the same.
ReplyDeleteJoanne Lopez
The Chicana poetry was very interesting to me because it talks a lot about women being independent. I liked these poetries because I like how women have come a long way from where they were before. Back in the day women didn’t have a saying in the decision of the households, all they did was stay home, cook meals and take care of the kids and nothing else. I like how in “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway” the author talks about how she started reading books, payed bills and fixed faucets because she is independent is this was rare for women back then, this was a “mans” and I like that all this is changing. I like how women now a day can be fine being independent and in our society, it’s perfectly normal. A woman has a right to be who she wants to be, if she thinks she can make it without a man then that’s fine because so many women these days have proven that they can be independent and don’t need a man. They have proven that they are strong to go against all the negativity in the world.
ReplyDeleteIvan Lira
The readings of Chicana Poetry were eye opening. I really enjoyed reading the poem of “Crisis de Identidad, o, Ya no chingues” by Margarita Cota- Cardenas was really funny mainly because the way y made it sound in my head but because the way they describe things is like my mom talks and also because she is describing things that women do. In the poem of “La Madre de Aztlan” by Mary Lou Espinosa really shown the difference between the Indians and the Spanish culture. In the Indian culture the women that is strong for her family is the women. For the Spanish culture the male is the one that is in charge of the family. In my family my dad is the dominant but my mother is like the glue of our family. So both of them are important to our family. In the reading “The Woman of La Raza” by Enriqueta Longeaux y Vasquez shows when the woman separates/ divorce from men they need to find a way to support her children they need to find a job. That’s one of the reason my parents insisted me to attend to college because in case that I get married and form a family but at the end I get divorce I could maintain my children without the need of a men to support me. And I think that no women should need a men to live happy of have what-ever they want because we as women are capable of a lot of things that men can’t do.
ReplyDelete-Mayra Saldaña
Chicana literature shares a lot of the same themes, which is highlighting the way we are marginalized in our own community. Internalized misogyny runs rampant throughout all cultures, but it is especially hard for the woman of color to deal with this on top of the racism she has to overcome as well. Like The Woman of La Raza states, the Latina woman has been “doubly oppressed” (31) and has experienced this oppression from the same men that she has been fighting alongside with for racial equality. Along with racism and sexism, the Chicana comes in conflict within herself. The way Margarita Cota-Cardenas describes a brown woman’s identity crisis is paired with humor in a poem that contains the inner monologue of a frustrated woman trying to find herself. In Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway, Lorna Dee Cervantes describes her woman-filled household and artistically depicts what that was like as a young girl to grow with her grandmother and mother. The beginning of the poem begins with her labeling the family dynamics as royalty, her grandma being the queen and her mother wanting to be a princess but being a knight. She mentions her grandmother’s distrust of things she has not built and the type of blame that an abused woman experiences from society. This excerpt flows from her being a child to an adult and how living with two Mexican woman has shaped her into a young adult, ending the poem with “I will tie up my hair into loose braids and only trust what I have built with my own hands.” (2014) just like her grandmother with the mannerisms of her mother. Mary Lou Espinosa begins talking about the power dynamics in our society in relation to gender and gender equality but it rubs me the wrong way when she takes on a victim-blaming stance on why we have yet achieved it. She states that “Man cannot change his attitude toward woman until the woman perceives her deep psychological self as independent and asserted from man.” I believe the author has a solid and logical stance on the first step of equality being within the woman. This proves true when I see a lot of women start to believe what society has engrained in us, that were are second class citizens. I just don’t fully agree with her wording becomes it implies that maybe the woman has not gotten far because of her own faults and that a man is incapable of seeing us as equal until we do. This statement is also reminiscent of another which I do not agree with that says “how can men respect women when they don’t respect themselves?” I believe there are a lot of flaws to this argument.
ReplyDeleteAndrea Juarez
All of poetry that we read were all unique and informative yet they were all trying to come across and make some similar main points. For this week’s poetry were talking about how women confronted machismo and stood their ground. Theses women were not going to sit back and allow things to continue to be the same in this unequal environment of ours. The poem that caught more of my attention was La Madre De Aztlan by Mary Lou Espinosa. The stanza that really connected to me was when Mary states “Man cannot change his attitude toward woman until the woman perceives her deep psychological self as independent and asserted from man”, meaning a man will not change his attitude towards a woman until she makes it known she is independent and strong-willed. I can first hand relate to this because during my first year of high school I had to the mentality that I needed a man to be happy and to depend on. The moment I got into a relationship with a guy who had the mentality that women were there to serve them because that was the way he was brought up having his mom and two sisters on his feet and at the snap of his fingers 24/7 as he pleased I knew that wasn’t the lifestyle for me. I slowly but surely started to realize how blinded I was to this idea of “perfect”. I became independent and more mature. I realized that I need no man to support me or better yet have the idea that I’m on earth to serve him. Just like every man can do hard labor or get their education so can women. Women can do anything a man can and sometimes even twice as good. I strongly believe us women have progressed so much over theses past few decades or so. These poems really open my eyes a lot more.
ReplyDeleteBrandi Rae Rodriguez
Reading the Chicana Poetry made me realize how strong and courageous women are. We often hear that women are strong because we can tolerate intensive pain or because we can divide ourselves between the house duties, mother duties, wife duties, and sometimes professional duties. However, the power and strength that women have, goes far beyond our intellectual or physical capacities, the real power is in our desire to be seen as a valuable member of our society.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear that for thousands of years women have struggled with independence, and we have to recognize that women nowadays have come a long way. We see more women pursuing their educational goals, working as professionals for very important corporations, and others realize themselves as successful housewives and mothers who enjoy living in a healthy marriage.
I have always believed that God designated our roles as husband and wife with a perfect purpose. Scripture says that husbands should love their wives and care for them, and wives should submit to their husbands in love. This does not mean that as wives we are going to surrender our will to a man, but we can definitely live in a marriage that would not be perfect, but will be healthy. I love how Enriqueta Longeaux y Vásquez depicts women’s role as one who “must help liberate the man and the man must look upon this liberation with the woman at his side, not behind him, following, but alongside him, leading...when a man can look upon a woman as human, then, and only then, can he feel the true meaning of liberation and equality”. Liberty for women is not about taking the men’s role in society, is about being loved, respected, and seen as a powerful human being capable of working hand in hand with men to make this world a better place for future generations.
Rossy Tapia Cervantes
In reading the Chicana Poetry women are such a strong symbol. Women are the ones who care for the family and lead them on the right path. In the first poem “The Woman of La Raza states how women are the ones who suffer the most. The reading stated that if the man cannot provide for the woman then the woman will have to look for a job out of survival. In “la Madre de Aztlan” the quote “no woman can expect nor demand to be thoroughly accepted as equal in a man’s eyes nor be given equal recognition if she first does not believe in her potential” this statement really caught my attention because sometimes as a woman I do not believe I have equal potential as a man. Sometimes I dought myself and lower myself. I’ve noticed that when you don’t have confidence in yourself then no one will acknowledge you at all. The Poem “Beneath the Shadows of the Freeway” to my understanding talks about a woman who has changed roles with a male. Instead of her being a princess or queen like her grandma or mother she chose an education. Instead of following the tradition of her family she accomplished what she wanted to do.
ReplyDeleteVictoria Galvan