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[Thesis Title Page] MAKING SPACE, MAKING SOUL: RENOVATING SITES OF CHICANA ABJECTION IN PEEL MY LOVE LIKE AN ONION AND CARAMELO Shelley Noel Engstrom B.A., Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, 2006 THESIS Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in ENGLISH (Literature) at CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO SPRING 2012 MAKING SPACE, MAKING SOUL: RENOVATING SITES OF CHICANA ABJECTION IN PEEL MY LOVE LIKE AN ONION AND CARAMELO A Thesis by Shelley Noel Engstrom Approved by: __________________________________, Committee Chair Hellen Lee-Keller, Ph.D. __________________________________, Second Reader Chauncey Ridley, Ph.D. Date:_____________________________ ii Student: Shelley Noel Engstrom I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for the thesis. __________________________, Graduate Coordinator ___________________ David Toise, Ph.D. Date Department of English iii Abstract of MAKING SPACE, MAKING SOUL: RENOVATING SITES OF CHICANA ABJECTION IN PEEL MY LOVE LIKE AN ONION AND CARAMELO by Shelley Noel Engstrom In response to white, patriarchal, elite, hetero-normative U.S. culture’s multiple marginalizations of Chicanas, some voices in contemporary Chicana literary criticism work toward creating an essentially Chicana body of criticism that excludes voices of dominant U.S. culture. While at the heart of this trend lies the desire for Chicana creativity to escape marginalization, this movement dismisses rather than confronts problems within dominant U.S. culture. But it appears that, as contemporary Chicana literature becomes increasingly accepted by and published within mainstream U.S. culture, Chicana creativity is moving in a different direction. In the following analysis, I examine two contemporary novels, Ana Castillo’s Peel My Love Like an Onion (1999) and Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo (2002), that are very much within yet remain openly critical of the dominant U.S. culture of which they are a part. As critical works that closely examine the subversive power of working within while deconstructing structures of oppression, both Sonia Saldívar-Hull’s feminism on the border and Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection inform my study of these novels. In her examination of Chicana identity politics, Saldívar-Hull explores how contemporary Chicana literature challenges dominant U.S. culture’s exclusion of Chicana voices and recovers the histories of those who have been denied expression within dominant culture. And in her psychoanalytic study of the negotiations of power involved in abjection and marginalization, Kristeva examines the transgressive power of those who deconstruct dominant culture as outsiders within. With these theories to provide the framework of my argument, I study how Castillo and Cisneros de-essentialize and expand Chicana literature by creating novels more richly complex than culturally essential, and how they deconstruct Chicana abjection and propel Chicana feminist narratives into new territories. _______________________ , Committee Chair Hellen Lee-Keller, Ph.D. _______________________ Date iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a sincere thank you to Dr. Hellen Lee-Keller, my advisor, for encouraging me to write this thesis, for challenging me to think in new ways, and for helping me to grow as a writer. Without her flexibility, patience, and guidance, I would not have been able to complete this work. I also owe my gratitude to Dr. Chauncey Ridley, my second reader, for his patience, his willingness to work with me, and his honest feedback. Finally, I want to thank my friends and family who have supported me throughout this writing process by reading my work, listening to my thoughts, and helping me focus. I am most indebted to my husband, Rick, for his stability, strength, and wisdom throughout this process. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………..v Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1 Historical Overview ............................................................................................. 1 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................ 6 Overarching Argument ...................................................................................... 14 Articulation of Stakes ........................................................................................ 23 Chapter Outlines ................................................................................................ 27 2. STANDING AT THE EDGE: AN INTERSECTION OF ABJECTION AND FEMINISM ON THE BORDER ............................................................................. 30 Perspectives on Chicana Feminism ................................................................... 33 Border Studies: A Liminal Space ...................................................................... 44 Feminism on the Border Meets Abjection ......................................................... 54 3. CARMEN SANTOS ................................................................................................ 65 Form ................................................................................................................... 66 Content ............................................................................................................... 70 4. CELAYA REYES .................................................................................................... 94 Form ................................................................................................................... 95 Content ............................................................................................................. 104 5. CONCLUSION: MAKING SPACE, MAKING SOUL ........................................ 127 vi WORKS CITED .......................................................................................................... 152 vii 1 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION American but hyphenated, viewed by Anglos as perhaps exotic, perhaps inferior, definitely different, viewed by Mexicans as alien, (their eyes say, “You may speak Spanish but you’re not like me”) an American to Mexicans a Mexican to Americans […]. - from Pat Mora’s “Legal Aliens” (ll. 8-15) In her poem “Legal Aliens,” Pat Mora captures the estrangement Chicanas/os encounter as multiply marginalized members of a culture somewhere in between dominant U.S. and Mexican cultures. Although Chicanas/os are members of U.S. culture with Mexican heritage, dominant U.S. and Mexican cultures tend to reject them for their racial, class, linguistic, and cultural differences. And as women within both patriarchal U.S. and Chicano cultures, Chicanas are additionally marginalized for their gender. Caught in between these multiple marginalizations, more Chicanas are turning to and embracing the geographical and philosophical space of the border as a site in which to explore their hybrid, complex, and multi-faceted identities. And it is in this flexible and blended border space where I position the following exploration of contemporary Chicana literature. Historical Overview In their early socio-historical work La Chicana: The Mexican American Woman (1979), Alfredo Mirandé and Evangelina Enríquez define a Chicana as “a woman (1) of 2 Mexican descent, (2) living in the United States, (3) culturally neither Mexican nor American but influenced by both societies, and (4) from a colonized minority [which experiences] a sense of marginality in an Anglo-dominated society” (12). Furthermore, Mirandé and Enríquez argue that la Chicana endures a “triple oppression:” as a member of an “internal colony” within the U.S., as a woman within the U.S., and as a Chicana (female) within Chicano (male) culture in the U.S. (12-13). This triple oppression is precisely what Chicanas began to openly address alongside issues of the Chicana/o movement in the 1960s and 1970s. During these significant decades, Chicanas/os, a group consistently relegated to the margins of U.S. society, united to reject what Chicana/o historian Francisco Lomelí calls “the stigma of second-class citizenship;” to fight unfair working conditions, racism, and poverty; and to establish themselves as a growing cultural force (Lomelí 90).i Lomelí notes, “The agenda was institutional, economic, political, social and especially one of cultural pride. The central intent was to impact multiple sectors so as to achieve wide- spread results” (89-90). One of the most successful areas of Chicana/o cultural progress was in literature and the arts. As Lomelí observes, the dynamism of the movement cultivated “[a] new creative spirit [… which] helped produce a boom in literature, music, painting, murals, philosophy and overall cultural expression. Therefore, the Movement and the literary component became closely intertwined symbiotically as two parts of the same as they nurtured each other” (90).ii One highly prominent political task of the Chicana/o movement’s literature involved an effort to recover “the[ir] history [… ] from the oblivion to which American social and literary history ha[d] consigned it” (R. 3 Saldívar 19). Chicanas/os sought to rectify the one-sided history that had been delivered through the lens of U.S. Manifest Destiny,iii pitting the self-proclaimed angelic Anglos against the so-called savage and illegal natives. As is in the
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