In an attempt to narrow a perceived gap between two literary fields, this thesis provides a comparative analysis of Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Humminbird’s Daughter, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead. I explore and critique the ways in which Luis Alberto Urrea mobilizes mestizaje and Chicana/o nationalist rhetoric. I argue that mestizaje stems from colonial representations that inscribe indigenous people into a narrative of erasure. Furthermore, I address Leslie Marmon Silko’s critique of mestizaje within Almanac of the Dead. / text

Chicana literature is often discussed in relation to broad literary or theoretical movements (post-modernism, magic realism, or feminism) but these approaches often fail to account for or even consider other culturally derived sources of critical interrogation. For example, Chicana authors, through direct references or allusions, demonstrate that Spanish-language soap operas, known as telenovelas, have a cultural currency that can bridge people across generations, nationalities, and class differences. Telenovelas also have theoretical value, for these productions often feature stories that address issues of race, class, gender, nationality, language, and violence. Reading contemporary Chicana literature through the lens of the telenovela, including its history and status as a cultural form, reveals the ways in which Chicana authors not only rely on but also revise the form. They disrupt the rigid Manichean world view present in telenovelas by challenging heteronormative romance and traditional gender roles to allow for alternate stories, where endings are not always tidy or happy. Drawing on recent ethnographic research in communication studies, I examine the history of Spanish-language television within the U.S. to substantiate the cultural currency of and show how the telenovela permeates and informs Mexican-American identity. Relying on the work of Jesús Martín-Barbero, I trace the development of the melodrama and romance genres out of which telenovelas emerge, evolving from newspaper serials, radionovelas, fotonovelas, to comic strip novels or libros semanales. I focus on the literary roots of the telenovela genre (with its origins in 19th century European serialized fiction) in relation to early Mexican-American historical romance narratives (María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Jovita González, and Eve Raleigh). Based on Gustavo Aprea and Rolando C. Martínez Mendoza's definition of the telenovela genre, I examine how contemporary Chicana fiction (Denise Chávez, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, and Nina Marie Martínez) both conforms to and deviates from the generic conventions. I provide a culturally based critical strategy for offering alternate readings of Chicana literature to show how these authors use the popularity of the telenovela form to reach a specific audience and lend new insight into how viewers, familiar with the genre conventions, are comparable to literary critics. / text

O objetivo desta dissertação é analisar contos selecionados e o romance Under the Feet of Jesus da escritora chicana Helena María Viramontes, enfocando a apropriação de mitos astecas e lendas mexicanas protagonizados por figuras femininas, históricas ou míticas, como La Manlinche, La Llorona e The Hungry Woman. Esta re-visão crítica do passado tem um papel vital para as chicanas, reais e ficcionais, ao enfrentarem o domínio patriarcal, colonial e neocolonial. Devido à complexidade gerada pela ausência de linearidade narrativa, tanto nos contos como no romance, tornou-se necessária uma breve análise das estratégias narrativas a fim de ilustrar como tais estratégias estão intrinsecamente ligadas à apresentação fragmentada da vida dos trabalhadores migrantes. Foi igualmente indispensável examinar as demais práticas narrativas da autora tais como focalização, desconstrução, simultaneidade e justaposição, assim como o elo, por ela proposto em Under the Feet of Jesus, entre leitura, identidade, e engajamento com o mundo para promover a transformação social / The aim of this dissertation is to analyze selected short stories and the novel Under the Feet of Jesus by Chicana writer Helena María Viramontes, focusing on her appropriation of Aztec myths and Mexican legends whose protagonists are feminine figures, whether of historical or mythical origin, such as La Malinche, La Llorona and The Hungry Woman. This critical re-view of the past plays a vital role for real and fictional Chicanas when facing patriarchal, colonial and neocolonial domination. Due to the complexity brought by the lack of linearity in the narrative, both in the short stories and in the novel, a brief analysis of the narrative strategies became necessary to show how these strategies are intertwined with the fragmented presentation of the migrant workers lives. It became equally indispensable to examine other narrative practices adopted by the author, namely, focalization, deconstruction, simultaneity and juxtaposition, as well as the link she establishes in Under the Feet of Jesus between reading, identity and effective human agency in order to achieve social changes

O objetivo desta dissertação é analisar contos selecionados e o romance Under the Feet of Jesus da escritora chicana Helena María Viramontes, enfocando a apropriação de mitos astecas e lendas mexicanas protagonizados por figuras femininas, históricas ou míticas, como La Manlinche, La Llorona e The Hungry Woman. Esta re-visão crítica do passado tem um papel vital para as chicanas, reais e ficcionais, ao enfrentarem o domínio patriarcal, colonial e neocolonial. Devido à complexidade gerada pela ausência de linearidade narrativa, tanto nos contos como no romance, tornou-se necessária uma breve análise das estratégias narrativas a fim de ilustrar como tais estratégias estão intrinsecamente ligadas à apresentação fragmentada da vida dos trabalhadores migrantes. Foi igualmente indispensável examinar as demais práticas narrativas da autora tais como focalização, desconstrução, simultaneidade e justaposição, assim como o elo, por ela proposto em Under the Feet of Jesus, entre leitura, identidade, e engajamento com o mundo para promover a transformação social / The aim of this dissertation is to analyze selected short stories and the novel Under the Feet of Jesus by Chicana writer Helena María Viramontes, focusing on her appropriation of Aztec myths and Mexican legends whose protagonists are feminine figures, whether of historical or mythical origin, such as La Malinche, La Llorona and The Hungry Woman. This critical re-view of the past plays a vital role for real and fictional Chicanas when facing patriarchal, colonial and neocolonial domination. Due to the complexity brought by the lack of linearity in the narrative, both in the short stories and in the novel, a brief analysis of the narrative strategies became necessary to show how these strategies are intertwined with the fragmented presentation of the migrant workers lives. It became equally indispensable to examine other narrative practices adopted by the author, namely, focalization, deconstruction, simultaneity and juxtaposition, as well as the link she establishes in Under the Feet of Jesus between reading, identity and effective human agency in order to achieve social changes

This ethnography of spirituality explores the production of cultural practices and beliefs among a group of Texas Mexican women (Tejanas) of the post-World War II generation. These women have been involved with various social justice initiatives since the 1960s and 1970s in Texas, such as the Chicana feminist and Chicano civil rights movements. This study explains how race, ethnicity, and gender intersect and interact in these women’s geographic and spiritual borderlands to produce a pattern of change in the ways they choose to engage with religion, particularly Catholicism. While the Tejana spiritual productions examined here are in many ways distinct from the religious practices of these women’s Catholic upbringings, they also recall religious rituals and traditions from their imagined, constructed, and engaged pasts. Some women have left Catholicism for other forms of spiritual fulfillment, including earth-based, indigenous, and/or Eastern religious practices, while others have remained Catholic-identified, yet altered how they practice Catholicism. A common theme in the narratives is that of spiritual agency – the conscious decision women make to reconfigure their spiritual practices and beliefs. I explore the meaning of such acts and what they indicate about the construction of spiritual and religious identities in the borderlands. I argue that because gender structures Tejana religious experiences to such a wide extent, a critical gender analysis of religious and spiritual practices will provide deeper insight into the making of Texas Mexican culture and social relations. I examine the women’s life experiences through a methodological framework I call mujerista ethnography, which draws on oral history and research methods employed by feminist, indigenous, and Chicana/o Studies scholars. In order to further illustrate how the women’s material and spiritual needs have changed so as to require new forms of spiritual engagement, I engage in a critical self-reflection of my own spiritual journey as a Tejana raised in the Catholic faith through the use of autoethnographic research methods and testimonio. I argue that these Tejanas have extended the political, feminist, and historical consciousnesses that they cultivated in Mexican American social causes into the religious and spiritual realms. For instance, these women transferred their critique of gender politics and hierarchies of power into the social setting of organized Catholicism with new spiritual practices and understandings, effectively remaking religion and subsequently engaging in processes of self-making by changing the ways they interact with Catholicism and are affected by it. Religion, as a site of social struggle for women, is political, that is, these Tejanas transformed the spiritual into a site of resistance, resolution, and reconciliation where they disrupt and challenge hierarchies of power and create strategies for healing themselves, their communities, and the earth. / text

Supervisors: Luis Urrieta and Noah De Lissovoy This qualitative and sociohistorical study examines the lives and experiences of Chicana/o educators in Texas and the ideological and political discourses of equity and social justice that they draw from to shape their practice in three educational sites: the Llano Grande Center (LGC), Red Salmon Arts/Resistencia Bookstore (RSA), and the Advanced Seminar in Chicana/o Research (ASCR). I document their work based on the oral narratives of fifteen educators, site document analysis, and ethnographic work I conducted as observant participant associated with these organizations. This project extends recent scholarship that links critical pedagogy, social and cultural theories of identity formation and new social movement scholarship to understand the multiple cultural, social and political dimensions of activist education. My principal findings indicate new senses of individual and collective identity practice, reframed critical and culturally relevant pedagogies, and a reconceptualization of indigenous discourse and practice. These findings have important implications for activists, educators and researchers by rearticulating scholar activist work in new more emancipatory ways that considers place-based models of critical and cultural relevant teaching and learning and more radically democratic research practices. / text

This person-centered ethnography focused on the ways one exemplary veteran Mexican American bilingual educator’s (MABE’s) cultural resources and professional experiences influenced her teaching practices. The study examined her life history and classroom practices to explore the trajectory of her identity making. The framework utilized in this research included a sociohistorical/sociocultural lens and Chicana/Latina feminist theories. Specifically, my research investigated the multiple spaces where a MABE navigated between an additive bilingual education model and a subtractive one. The study relied primarily on data collected from oral life history interviews augmented by participant observations at a school in a large, central Texas district. The participant, a first grade teacher with 28 years of classroom experience in the same district, was interviewed over a four-year span. Further, classroom observations occurred during a full school year. Additional interviews with educators who worked with the participant at critical moments in her professional life provided not only triangulation of information, but also a multiplicity of perspectives and foci on the educational landscapes wherein she operated. Narrative analysis of the data involved the decoding and deconstruction of a MABE’s active participation in the processes of performing and (re)presenting her identity production including being silenced and speaking up. The findings revealed a dialectic and dialogic process between personal experiences, early schooling, impositions of policies, and daily-lived classroom experience while constantly navigating and negotiating the challenges of educating culturally and linguistically diverse students. A primary finding revealed the construct of autobiographical consciousness as a MABE’s critical awareness of the historical legacy, lived experiences, and the contexts in which she teaches. The study documented silencing through marginalization, as well as establishing voice through agency to understand construction and reconstruction of identities. / text

This dissertation examines the works of four Chicana/o writers who write about Los Angeles, California urban spaces, and how the literary protagonist experiences the material realities of everyday life. The objective of this dissertation is to look at the mechanisms used by the narrator and the meaning they transmit through the description of urban space. David Harvey's theory on the Urbanization of Consciousness is used to analyze the spatial transformation taking place in Los Angeles from the 1960's to the 1980's. Moreover, I utilize Michael de Certeau's explanations of how the practices of everyday life influence the author's cartographic imaginary. These practices are manifested in the narrator's description of the physical and social space and they convey an ideological message that points to the process of urbanization of consciousness in a capitalist society. Additionally, it draws together the work of important theorists such as Henri Lefebvre, Rodolfo Acuña, Mario Barrera, and James Diego Vigil. Chapter one introduces the theoretical framework that is used throughout this study. It establishes a definition of the urbanization of consciousness and how the main characters' interact with money, family, community, class, and the State. Chapter two explains how the rapid urban development in East Los Angeles during the 1960's shaped the characters' upbringings in the novel Their Dogs Came With Them (2007) by Helena María Viramontes. Chapter three analyzes how urban space molds the consciousness of the individual in Always Running, La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. (1993) by Luis J. Rodríguez. Chapter four examines the architectural imagination in the novel of Alejandro Morales' Caras viejas y vino nuevo (1975). Chapter five studies the urbanization of gang violence among Chicana/o youth in the work of Yxta Maya Murray, Locas (1997). My investigation leads me to conclude that the Chicana/o community became urbanized when its members began to mirror its fragmented environment and when they began to see themselves as wage workers.

Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s overhaul of the national education system in the early 1990’s offers an example of how neoliberal governments have reworked education systems and curriculum to fit neoliberal economic models. Part of the goal of this overhaul was to reconstruct a national identity that would support the development of neoliberalism in Mexico, where the post-Revolutionary national values ran contrary to those of neoliberal capitalism. This thesis explores the reconstruction of national identity through the use of educational policy in Mexico to rewrite historical narratives to promote the government’s neoliberal agenda. It examines the changes implemented in educational policies to understand the fundamental shift in the government’s approach to education and in the neoliberal agenda directing that approach. Next, it analyzes the historical narratives presented in one state-sponsored primary history textbook to investigate how the historical narrative is revised. The findings suggest that the new educational policies apply a neoliberal framework to the public education system, and that reframed historical narratives are designed to highlight capitalist values, such as individualism, Western notions of modernity, and the maintenance of social order, while downplaying and criticizing revolutionary nationalism.

Narratives of successful navigation are the personal stories of 13 Latin@ undergraduate students who navigated the public school system and completed high school in the United States. Their words recount their individual journeys resulting in their enrollment at a 4-year research university in the Pacific Northwest as opposed to a 2-year community college. More than half of the study respondents begun their postsecondary studies at a community college. The navigation of these particular individuals were experienced differently than those respondents whose trajectory led them straight into the university. Three categories corresponding to the study’s three research questions were analyzed. First, common challenges produced two themes, low social economics status (SES) and ethnic identity. Second, the category on persistence characteristics formulated only one construct, academic self-efficacy. Third, three interlocking themes of supportive factors fostering academic success were identified, the support of parents/ family members/peers, non-familial agents in the form of teachers, and lastly college readiness including AP or honors coursework. The thematic analysis of the respondents’ stories was influenced by the literature that documents challenges historically impeding Latin@ academic achievement and by the research on both persistence and supportive factors. The analyses of the individual navigational experience of the study participants found similarities within their experiences, but it also revealed the complexity of their own singular stories. The study centered more on the aspirations of Latin@ students rather than the damaging effects of their schooling experiences. While some of the respondents’ stories contain examples of challenges, the premise was in representing examples of successful navigation of the Chican@/Latin@ education pipeline (Solórzano, 1998).