Saddling La Gringa: Gatekeeping in Literature by Contemporary Latina Writers
By (Author) Phillipa Kafka
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Praeger Publishers Inc
30th September 2000
United States
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000
Gender studies: women and girls
Cultural studies
810.9868
Hardback
192
Width 156mm, Height 235mm
397g
Because of their ethnic identity, Latinas sometimes face discrimination in the United States. Latinas are additionally oppressed because of their genderbecause they are women, they hold a subordinate position in patriarchal Latino culture. The oppression of Latinas is maintained through various cultural mechanisms, which sustain power relations based on gender. This book gives special attention to the role of female cultural gatekeepers in novels by contemporary Latina writers. These gatekeepers enforce and perpetuate patriarchal cultural constraints onto future generations of Latinas. They construct and police female identity, including their own, through the use of idiomatic expressions, epithets, jokes, morality tales, and myths. The volume begins by examining Judith Ortiz Cofer's Silent Dancing, a work that clearly illustrates the role of gatekeepers in perpetuating gendered power relations. It then turns to the writings of Christina Garca, Julia Alvarez, Rosario Ferre, and Magali Garcia Ramis. Through their highly critical yet loving characterizations of female gatekeepers, these Latina writers suggest a different way of life for Latinas, a feminist way.
.,."highly readable....A valuable tool for the study of Latina contemporary literature, this accessible, focused volume will serve undergraduates and researchers well."-Choice
...highly readable....A valuable tool for the study of Latina contemporary literature, this accessible, focused volume will serve undergraduates and researchers well.-Choice
..."highly readable....A valuable tool for the study of Latina contemporary literature, this accessible, focused volume will serve undergraduates and researchers well."-Choice
PHILLIPA KAFKA is Professor Emerita of English and Former Director of Women's Studies at Kean University. Her previous books include (Un)Doing the Missionary Position: Gender Asymmetry in Contemporary Asian American Women's Writing (Greenwood, 1997), and The Great White Way: African American Women Writers and American Success Mythology (1993).