La Malinche is one of the most controversial figures in Mexican and Chicano literature. The historical facts about her life before and after the Spanish Conquest are largely speculative. What is reliably known is that she had a significant role as translator, which developed into something of mythic proportions. The ideological appropriation of her image by three authors, Octavio Paz, Laura Esquivel and Cherríe Moraga, are explored in this thesis. The full extent of the proposed rendition of La Malinche by Octavio Paz is the basis of the second chapter. The conclusion drawn by Paz, in The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950) is that La Malinche is what he calls la chingada [the raped/violated one] and proposes that all women are always open to conquest, sexually and otherwise. Laura Esquivel's novel Malinche (2006) is a re-interpretation that focuses on the tongue as the source of power and language as the ultimate source of autonomy for La Malinche. This aspect of La Malinche and the contrast of Paz's understanding are the basis of the third chapter of this thesis. Cherríe Moraga, in Loving in the War Years (1983), proposes that if women are to be traitors, it is not each other that they should betray but their cultural roles as mothers and wives. She writes that in order to avoid being the one who is passively colonized, women often times become el chingón. However, ultimately women are free of these limiting dichotomous roles are able to autonomously define themselves in a way that goes beyond these labels. This is only possible when La Malinche is re-interpreted by these by different authors.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-191). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, August, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Central Connecticut State University, 1997. / Thesis advisor: Dr. Lilián Uribe. " ... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Modern Language (Spanish)." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-156).

This thesis explores the international dimensions of Rosario Castellanos’ writings, which exhibit a constant—and evolving—preoccupation with feminist literature from across the world. The Mexican woman, public intellectual, professor, author, and ambassador dialogued with Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Betty Friedan, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Gabriela Mistral, and Clarice Lispector, among others, while relating their ideas to Mexican women’s lives. Her journalistic production, essays, poetry, and narrative undergo an evolution as Castellanos articulates a unique Mexican feminist project that factors in race, class, and other intersections affecting Mexican women. I access Castellanos—who has been considered the “Simone de Beauvoir of Mexico”—through the lens of global feminism, which considers the varying layers of power and powerlessness when women of disparate regions and cultures seek solidarity. Through a global feminist perspective, we see how Castellanos, rather than blindly importing First World women’s agendas, carefully intervenes in global feminist discouses with what Mexican women need. In her evolution, Castellanos grows closer to a feminist project that, rather than buying into the myth of a global sisterhood, evokes instead a desire for a Latin American sisterhood and for Mexican women’s self-definition.

The problem of this study is that of developing a program of study of Mexican literature at the graduate level at North Texas State University. The study of literature and culture is approached by probing into the influences on the thinking of the Mexican and by using an in-depth study, rather than an "anthology" approach to teaching. The findings of the study indicate a need for an upper level course in Mexican literature at North Texas State University. Therefore, the following recommendations seem appropriate: (1) that North Texas State University initiate a course in Mexican literature which may be utilized by both students in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and students in the Bilingual/Bicultural Education program; (2) that the course be made available to both graduate and upper-level students; (3) that oral communication be emphasized in the course and that student participation in the target language be maximized.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 214-227).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Comparative Literature, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 257-266).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-214). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-214). Also available on the Internet.