My Mother's Daughter Monica Vanessa Martinez University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected]
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University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2013-01-01 My Mother's Daughter Monica Vanessa Martinez University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Chicana/o Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Latina/o Studies Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Martinez, Monica Vanessa, "My Mother's Daughter" (2013). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 1877. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/1877 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MY MOTHER’S DAUGHTER MONICA VANESSA MARTINEZ Department of Creative Writing APPROVED: Lex Williford, Chair Daniel Chacon Maryse Jayasuriya, Ph.D. Benjamin C. Flores, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School Copyright © by Monica Vanessa Martinez 2013 Dedication To my mother, Irma Martinez Montelongo. I will forever be my mother’s daughter, and that is a good thing. To Alejandro Montelongo, my ever present, and more importantly, ever supportive dad. To my darling sister, Marissa Montelongo. And finally, to la familia: your love and support are the best gifts I have ever been given because they gave me the courage to put my words out into the world. MY MOTHER’S DAUGHTER by MONICA VANESSA MARTINEZ, BA THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Department of Creative Writing THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO May 2013 Table of Contents Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................. v The Importance of Using First-Person Point of View to End the Silence of Chicana Voices in My Mother's Daughter .................................................................................................................. 1 Part I: Iris and Molly ...................................................................................................................... 18 The Hierarchy of Tamale Making ................................................................................................. 19 A Visit With My Mother ............................................................................................................... 22 Confession ..................................................................................................................................... 39 Part II: Bianca and Ada .................................................................................................................. 49 Chat…. ........................................................................................................................................... 50 Working the Room ........................................................................................................................ 55 Without Help ................................................................................................................................. 60 Part III: Lucia, Veronica and Carolina .......................................................................................... 65 My Mother's Daughter ................................................................................................................... 66 Women in Black ............................................................................................................................ 72 A Family First ................................................................................................................................ 82 Part IV: Vallia ................................................................................................................................ 97 Mikimotos ...................................................................................................................................... 98 Concealer ..................................................................................................................................... 117 Sunday Dinners ............................................................................................................................ 126 Part V: Alicia and Eve ................................................................................................................. 140 A Upset in the Routine ................................................................................................................ 141 Engagement Photo ....................................................................................................................... 143 New Year's Eve ........................................................................................................................... 144 Vita…………….. ........................................................................................................................ 156 v The Importance of Using First-Person Point of View to End the Silence of Chicana Voices in My Mother’s Daughter What amazed me was: I wrote about a girl who plays chess and her mother is both her worst adversary and her best ally. I didn't play chess, so I figured that counted for fiction, but I made her Chinese-American, which made me a little uncomfortable. By the end of this story I was practically crying. Because I realized that -- although it was fiction and none of that had ever happened to me in that story -- it was the closest thing to describing my life. Amy Tan An Interview with the Academy of Achievement Amy Tan wrote fiction with the intention of mirroring her culture. While writing her story made her feel “a little uncomfortable,” Tan wrote a collection of linked stories that mirrors her background by using multiple narrators to highlight the conflicts between mothers and daughters. Her collection also mirrors my collection in that I sought a way to focus on the lives of minority women—in my case Chicana women—and the conflicts between mothers and daughters. Using first-person narrative to show the diverse voices of Chicanas seemed most appropriate to illustrate the conflicts they face trying to live within family-centric culture. Moreover, I wanted to show the Chicano culture from the inside and how the Catholic religion and the family dictate how Chicanas must live. First-person narrative seemed like a fitting way to show the Chicano culture while also challenging it by giving a voice to the Chicanas who are typically silenced in this male-dominated world. In doing this, perhaps, I would also find my own voice in the male dominated world of literature. 1 While first-person narrative is not the only way to produce the inner thoughts of a character, it was the way best suited to show the conflicts between the characters in their own unique voices. This is important because third-person narration, even when intimate, can cause a distance between the character and the reader. There is a need to see the internal conflicts between what a character thinks and how they act and these conflicts need to be heard from the character’s own voice in order to grasp the full depth of the disconnect between thoughts and actions. As Amy Tan says in an interview: Of the feelings that I had, of these things that my mother had taught me that were inexplicable or had no name. This invisible force that she taught me, this rebellion that I had. And then feeling that I had lost some power, lost her approval and then lost what had made me special. It was a magic turning point for me. I realized that was the reason for writing fiction. (“Amy Tan Interview,” 5) The conflict between what Tan’s mother expected of her and what she wanted to do herself, shares with her readers the lessons that her mother tried to instill in her and possibly even how she failed at those lessons. But this external dispute between mother and daughter is really just a surface conflict; the deeper conflict is how the external conflicts between mothers and daughters force them to endure their own internal conflicts. For example, in this thesis the character Carolina in “A Family First” wants to divorce her husband, but her mother visits her in an attempt to stop her. Her mother, Lucia, brings the couple together, inviting the husband into the Carolina’s home after Carolina has kicked him out 2 him out. However, the mother-daughter issue is just a precursor to the real conflict of the story. Will Carolina go against her religion, tradition and mother by divorcing her husband? Using the first-person narrative for this particular story allows the reader to hear Carolina in her own voice: “[Mamá] stepped out of the home and I was really alone. I stared down at the painting my mother had lovingly, if not misguidedly, hung. I picked it up, took it back in the living room and placed it on the wall again.” Hearing Carolina’s own words, the reader can understand that she is sad about her divorce and about being alone. By rehanging the painting her mother hung without permission, Carolina shows the reader that she understands her mother’s personal choice of abiding by religious standards. Even if she doesn’t agree to stay married, Carolina shows respect for her mother’s position. If the reader witnessed Carolina’s actions from a third-person perspective, without hearing Carolina’s own words,