Blog 2: Questions for Professor Gaspar de Alba

Essay One: Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore’s Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo.

Question to Alba: Why do you believe that several reviewers of the CARA (Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation) exhibition at the UCLA Wight Art Gallery in 1990 believed that Chicana artists were greatly expressed as the Chicano artists when clearly, the quantitative analysis shows otherwise? I am interested in this answer, as it seems very obvious based off of the quantitative analysis that Chicanas were not expressed as equally as the Chicano artists. It appears from Alba’s essay that the CARA National Committee wanted to make awareness to the gender inequality issue amongst Chicanas. If so, why didn't they? Why was there still inequality present in the exhibition? The possible answers to this is that maybe the committee, as well as the reviewers felt that giving the Chicanas their own section of “Feminist Visions” was enough to satisfy the inequality. Maybe one has to be in the shoes of a Chicana to understand that yes they do have their own section, but they should be well represented in all of the sections to be considered equal. The male to female ratio was extremely off in the other sections, therefore reiterating the internal struggle of Chicanas.

Essay Two: There is No Place Like Aztlán: Embodied Aesthetics in Chicana Art.

Question to Alba: What do you believe would be the most effective method of helping Chicanos become more connected with their Mexican history and background? From Alba’s essay, we can understand that there is no going back to “Aztlán” or the time before the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, therefore I am interested in how Chicanos today could become more connected to their backgrounds as well as their native language of Spanish, while still being accustomed to American values. Possible ways of helping Chicanos become more connected is for the individuals to try and seek answers and knowledge from relatives, online from research, or even from a university. There are plenty of resources out there for Chicanos who want to learn their history, but which ones would be the most effective? Maybe there are other methods that Alba might know of that would be as or more effective than my suggestions.