Debra Blake’s Chicana Sexuality and Gender

Chicana Sexuality and Gender: Cultural Refiguring in Literature, Oral History and Art highlights the work of various influential Chicana artist and how they have refigured and reworked confining constructions of women. Debra J. Blake analyzes four iconic images- La Malinche, La Virgen de Guadalupe, indigenous Mexica goddesses, and La Llorona. Blake highlights how contemporary Chicana women have reinterpreted these traditional figures to challenge the misrepresentation of women. For example, Blake highlights La Virgen de Guadalupe and how Chicana’s have reworked the iconic image. Debra states “these women negotiate and refigure the uneasy cultural terrains of disembodiment and embodiment, marriage and autonomy, virginity and sexuality in relation to La Virgen de Guadalupe” (Blake). La Virgen de Guadalupe encompasses social expectations of women, Chicana women understand this, and reworked her image to be more accessible and liberating. Artists such as Yolanda Lopez use art to challenge gender and social roles which have been instituted by a white narrative, which undermine women and communities of color.