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1) The literature in the early part of this course thematized how to bring into being a positive and empowered formation of Chicano/a identity. The literature later in the course thematized how the claim for a Chicana/o identity requires a continual navigation between a claim for incorporation and equality within U.S. society and a concern with divergent (sometimes opposing) positions of identity. These texts seek to examine the multiple facets of identity, related to gender identification, sexuality, spirituality, political activism, etc., that pull the Chicana/o characters we have encountered in these novels in contrasting, possibly irreconcilable directions.
Select one character from two of the following works: Artuo Islas’ The Rain God, Ana Castillo’s So Far From God, Gil Cuadros’ City of God, Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Martín & Meditations on the South Valley. Discuss the ways in which these two characters conform to or revolt against the ideological poles by which society seeks to identify these characters. Potential ideological constructions you might consider are: the individual’s relationship within or outside of the family; the character’s relationship and activism with or against the legal, police, or working worlds that the character encounters; the character’s relation within a religious or spiritual community, institution, or tradition; the character’s conformity to or rejection of the sexual expectations of his or her community, family, or partners, or others.
How do these characters reveal a critique of the ideological constructs that are available to the characters in the text? What is the relationship of the person’s body to institutions of power and control? How does one character or the other transcend or succumb to the stereotypes or scripted roles available to him or her? Does a contrast between revolutionary character and conformist character resolve, sustain, or ultimately reject a particular formation of Chicano identity? You might consider the ways in which these different characters perceive ethnicity, racial heritage, cultural performance, illness and/or health, or other features that locate their identity within a broader socio-political environment and/or struggle.
2) In Artuo Islas’ The Rain God, Ana Castillo’s So Far From God, and Gil Cuadros’ City of God, gender and sexuality emerge as contested sites of Chicano/a identity. The codes of proper Chicano masculinity and Chicana femininity are rigorously policed within the family as well as the broader sociopolitical sphere. Select two of the aforementioned texts and focus on one specific character from each who possesses a non-normative, deviant gender/sexual identity. Explicate how each text constructs a vision of “proper” masculinity/femininity and analyze how this character specifically challenges or undoes those codes.
Some questions to consider include but are not limited to the following: To what extent does the characters’ gender/sexual identity threaten the integrity of the family or the Chicano/a community as a whole? If the characters die as a result of their non-normative gender/sexual identity what kind of social critique does the book advance through their deaths? Does the text uphold the notion of a singular, proper masculinity/femininity or does it offer an alternative means of conceptualizing identity? What forms of justice are available or foreclosed to these characters (political, juridical, spiritual, etc)? What other crises are connected to gender and sexuality—religion, class, cultural affiliation, family belonging, etc.—and how are they resolved, if at all?
3) Several of the early texts we read for this class express a sense of the isolation or invisibility of Chicano/a communities. Thus notions of home and homelessness, dispossession and loss of land form some central concerns in these early texts. In later texts we have read, the issue of belonging becomes more localized, though no less complex.
Compare and contrast the significance of family in two of the following texts: Arturo Islas’s novel The Rain God, Ana Castillo’s novel So Far From God, Gil Cuadros’s short story collection City of God, Jimmy Santiago Baca’s long poem Martín. Focus on one particular character from each text and discuss how his or her family becomes a complex site of support and conflict. How do the characters come to a sense of resolution regarding their families, or do they? In answering this question, you will want to discuss both the productive and destructive dynamics of the family.
While you are not expected to cover them all, the following are issues you may want to consider. You might think through some of the ways in which family reproduces particular values or ideologies (regarding sexuality, racial identity, education, national identity, etc.) that conflict with or affirm the character’s own perception of social order. You might consider as well the ways in which families discipline their members and for what reasons. What is the result of this discipline? How are forms of power and disempowerment passed on through families? On what do these issues of power center? How do families provide a system of support as well as punishment and judgment? How do particular beliefs and forms of knowledge passed on through the family serve or hamper the characters? How do families provide (or fail to provide) individuals with a historical and/or critical consciousness?
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In considering the strengths of your essay, keep several things in mind:
— Have you provided a clear and explicit thesis? What is the main point that you are going to be arguing? How does the paper support, explain and elaborate this main point? In other words, does your argument have a clear structure?
— Have you used textual support to bolster (as opposed to pad) your essay? You want to quote a few well-chosen pertinent passages from the texts. When you quote from the text, you want to be sure to provide an analysis of why that quote is relevant – explain fully how that particular quote supports your argument at that particular point. Be sure to include page references.
— Have you written a comparison/contrast essay, or simply two separate essays? The strongest essays will integrate the discussion of the two works being compared, not offer two separate discussions joined by a phrase like “In comparison….” Organize your paper based on ideas, not the first half on one text and the second half on the other.
— Remember, the titles of novels, plays, movies, long poems and short story collections are either italicized or underlined. The titles of individual short poems and stories are “placed in quotation marks.” When writing about literature, you generally use the present tense to discuss the characters, as the books and their characters still exist in the present.
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