Chapter 1 of Chicana Sexuality and Gender

In the first chapter, Blake writes, “Chicana and U.S. Mexicana cultural refiguring participates in transcoding by confronting the elisions and denigrations of women in history through a dual remembering process of reclaiming female-oriented symbols and preserving cultural memories.” Chicanas and U.S. Mexicanas have been striving through art, literature, and oral history, to take back their cultural identity and heritage and to create a vibrant and more positive meaning for themselves through figures of legend or indigenous earth goddesses.

 Essentially, they take these figures and reimagine them as strong female characters with agency. They do this by leaving out aspects of these figures that are considered negative and that do not align with the Mexicana’s core value of self-determination and pride. Through the years, history and culture has been shaped by those in power, not only colonial powers but also through patriarchal society, so that female voices and perspectives have all but been left out. These stories fail to represent U.S. Mexicanas and Chicana's real lived experiences, so they are reclaiming these female figures for themselves by keeping aspects of the past in order to maintain cultural ties, but interpreting these characters in new ways that express their lived experiences and goals. In this way, Mexicanas can maintain their cultural ties to the past while also creating a new narrative that helps illustrate their values of female equality and autonomy within their culture. Through these new visions of historical and cultural female figures, Chicana woman are disrupting the narrative of history to create narratives that are more inclusive and reveal the struggles of women, gays, lesbians, and people of color.