montes, masia

My name is Masia (pronounced ma-see-ahh) and I am a 4th year transfer student majoring in Political Science and minoring in Chican@ Studies. I was raised in Long Beach by immigrant parents who came in their teenage years. I describe myself simply as a Chicana feminist because those are the identities that define me as a whole. I am not creative at all, I lack any artistic talent, but I do enjoy art history. Sadly, however, I have only been exposed to European artists such as Raphael, Van Eyck, and Da Vinci and not Chican@ or Latin American artists.

I found Professor Gaspar de Alba's "Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore's Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo" to be very thought provoking. Up to this point, I had never seen Chicana Art, let alone hear about the CARA traveling exhibition. I was not aware that aside from being ostracized in the Chicano Movement from the 1960's, Chicanas were also "not 'meant' to create murals" (121). In regards to the CARA traveling exhibition, I started to think that the majority of the audience that the artist was trying to reach out to was a Mexican American audience. Then, I thought, well we already know that these are struggles the Latin American community face, so how can Chicana artists make these struggles more understandable in order for an Anglo woman to see the world through a chicana lens?

In "There's No Place like Aztlan: Embodied Aesthetics in Chicana Art", I found it a bit harder to understand what Aztlan is since I am not familiar with it. However, I thought it was clever for Professor Gaspar de Alba to relate it back to The Wizard of Oz, which I am somewhat familiar with. I can definitely understand why some believed and felt that Chicana feminists were traitors, however, I do not agree with this thought. So, What type of approach or methods could they have used instead so that it did not appear as if they were breaking apart the familia but rather bringing to the podium the hijas de Cuauhtemoc as well?