Blog 4: Laura Alvarez

After Laura Alvarez shared her personal background and creativity behind her mystery solving characters and various paintings, I was able to get a better perspective on the meanings behind her paintings. Laura Alvarez shared that her mother originated from Tamaulipas, Mexico and obtained a legal status here in the United States through her marriage. She worked as a housemaid and would bring Laura along with her when she was a little girl. Ms. Alvarez also confessed that as a small girl, she would dress up in her fanciest of clothing before going to clean homes that were sometimes those of her peers at school. She was unconsciously developing a form of rejection of the possible perspectives of those around her. She did not want to be seen in ordinary clothing and help homeowners and society devalue her self-worth as there are strong stigmas toward housemaids being illiterate or non-English language speakers and thus being treated inhumanely. She dressed up to be seen and accepted and become visible, as opposed to invisible. Thus, her "dressing up" added value to the work she was doing in the sense that she looked like a jewel and should be treated as one too.

Alvarez's environment shaped how she expressed herself through her experience at specific times. When I see this painting, I imagine Double Agent Sirvienta Remedies (and little Laura Alvarez) changing from her self-assigned uniform, on a bus bench after work, into the shoes that she explained (in class) served as "the perfect shoes for crossing the border". Although Double Agent Sirvienta has now gained all the information she could when working as a Sirvienta and is changing out of he disguise, Laura Alvarez is changing  from a false identity, as seen by her nice dress and heels, into comfortable shoes and returning to her true identity as a Mexican-American young woman.The small map-like drawing on the side indicates a sense of direction and confidence that Double Agent Sirvienta has obtained from the information at the home. This information for Double Agent Sirvienta can be translated as Laura Alvarez's consciousness and acceptance of her identity and her possible future.

This is the bread and butter of Blake's arguments in her book Chicana Sexuality and Gender regarding political location. Blake argues that it is vital to consider one's own intersectionalities in order to be conscious of our own identities and political location. In other words, we must know who we are in order to gain proper representation and further consciousness for ourselves and others. Laura Alvarez does so through the changing of clothing, the sitting on a bus stop and the sense of direction.