The Chicano Experience
This is an excerpt from the paper...
Being Chicano is a state of consciousness. Nevertheless, as a minority population and identity within mainstream U.S. culture, this designation represents a culturally determined role imposed on Hispanic Americans from the outside. Within the history of the struggle between U.S. and Mexican cultures, the struggle for identity, independence, and a unique voice remains as paramount an individual and group issue today as it did more than a century and a half ago. Despite advances across all socio-economic measures, Chicanos continue to be ostracized by mainstream American culture for failing to conform to ôwhiteö paradigms of being. The struggle to overcome imposed conceptual boundaries by mainstream America has historically placed Chicanos in an inferior position with respect to validating their own unique sense of culture, race, class, gender, and sexuality. This analysis will examine the post-Chicano movement with respect to the struggle to forge an identity that is unique in light of being forced to exist within the cultural boundaries imposed by mainstream, primarily white, American society. In Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua (1999) provides a mestiza consciousness that attempts to provide a new ethos for Chicanos with the potential of smashing historically dualistic notions of ethnicity and race. The author discusses the way that culturally determined roles have been imposed on Chicanos from outside. When failu
. . .
he Chicano identity and soul is one that fails to translate in all its beauty to a mainstream, white culture bent on domination. However, Cisneros contends that language also represents a strategy Chicanos can use as a springboard to maintain an identity and voice that cannot be subordinated. However, the language still acts symbolically as a distancing factor between cultures. As Cisneros (2004) writes, ôThe neighbor ladies, Soledad, Dolores, they mightÆve known once the name of the arroyo before it turned English but they did not know nowö (261). In other instances, those who are Chicano and attempt to communicate in the dominant (i.e. English) language, are often thwarted in their efforts at clear communication.
We also see the fact that gender distinctions within cultures often pit women in minority culture against their own and mainstream culture in order to define a true identity and retain a unique voice. We see this when Cisneros (2004) describes Felice and her unusual habit of owning a truck, typically considered a æmachismoÆ behavior, ôEverything about this woman, this Felice, amazed Cleofilas. The fact that she drove a pickup. A pickup, mind you, but when Cleofilas asked if it was her husbandÆs, she said she di
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Mexican Indian, American Dream, Soledad Dolores, Hispanic Americans, Chicanosö Brown, Gloria Anzaldua, Lives TimBookTu, Court United, Curves Carmen, English Chicano, anzaldua 1999, perez ed chicana/chicano, gail perez ed, lives timbooktu, perez ed, chicana/chicano lives, mainstream culture, ed chicana/chicano, gail perez, migrant workers, ed chicana/chicano lives, chicana/chicano lives timbooktu, post-chicano movement, lives timbooktu 2004, 2004 pp,
Approximate Word count = 2029
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
More Essays on The Chicano Experience
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
