Resistance, Maintenance, and Affirmation in Chican@ Art.

Shifra Goldman's article focuses on race, ethnicity, and class as three key oppressive factors that resulted in a distinctly Chican@ aesthetic during the mid-twentieth century. She argues that visual artists reacted against this trifecta to create work that resisted an Anglo paradigm, maintained a Chican@ culture, and affirmed the identities of Mexican-Americans -- resulting in empowerment of community and self. She cites several examples of this type of empowerment: the use of anti-Anglo, "Indian" imagery in murals, the celebration of traditional foods, and the celebration of working-class members of the Chican@ community.

One artist Goldman references is Yolanda M. Lopez,  whose work examines the intersections between race, class, and gender. In the book, Yolanda M. Lopez, Karen Mary Davalos writes that the Lopez's belief that "respect is not only for the sacred or powerful drove her decade-long examination of ordinary women." One example of this type of reverence for working-class women can be seen in "A Woman's Work is Never Done." By elevating a working-class mother, Lopez rejects the Anglo paradigm of motherhood (passive, calm, etc.) and affirms the identity of a Chicana woman who may not have been given equal opportunities as a result of historical oppression. In this way, her work becomes a tool for self determination: Chicana women, including Lopez, have immense agency (emphasized by the woman in the painting voting) and exist on their own terms.