Shifra Goldman writes piece regarding how the Chicano culture has emerged and includes its history with colonialism. She goes into explaining how the Chicano culture has reclaimed their heritage by mentioning Aztlan and how the Chicano culture present in the Southwest are the efforts to demonstrate the power behind the Chicano community. Goldman further goes into explaining the types of racism that occurred to the Mexican American communities and how they tried to reclaim the identities through ethnicity and also explains how the majority of the time the Mexican community has been working class throughout the majority of history.
In Yolanda M. Lopez, the image that represents Lopez' Chicana self-determination the most to me would be her Self-Portrait because it shows some type of authority with the body language but it also conveys independence. This is extremely important because it is more effective in promoting Chicana art and power without falling into the romanticized images of Chicanas, which is something Lopez was very clear in trying to avoid.
Hey Valeria,
ReplyDeleteYour blog post made me realize how important history is towards self- determination. Like you mentioned, history is the foundation of Chicano culture and many are starting to use history to further their culture. However, this foundation can be flawed because history has multiple perspectives just like we saw in our class activity this week. History is never certain but there are many events that tell some truth, and I think this is what most people use when determining themselves. For example, racism towards the Mexican American communities, which you stated, holds truth through the personal experiences of someone from the past or even our generation. In this case, the history of racism empowers communities to define themselves and not allow racism to do so. Even here I see how important the relationship between history and self-determination is. Great blog post! It got me to see another angle of the article.