I was in a film studies course prior to this class and I remembered one of the required reading was Michael Cieutat’s account on Mexican iconography. “On the one hand, there was a Mexican Catholic, subject to a harsh social hierarchy (from hidalgo to peon, crushed by tradition… on the other, the American Protestant on racial purity, rejecting miscegenation, unlike the Mexican who accepts the mestizo.”
Religion seems to be poignant issue regardless of the period in which the novel is set. Ruiz de Burton uses Catholicism to distinguish Spanish Catholics and Irish Catholics through Lola’s refusal to sleep beside Mrs. Norval’s Irish maid. The boy in Rivera’s novel seems to have a problematic relationship towards religion. Rivera juxtaposes images and ideas.
The novels also better informed me of Chicano history. The theory of Manifest destiny was reflected in Who Would Have Thought It? and migration seemed to be the pressing concern in ...y no se lo trago la tierra before it was published in the 1970s.
I have enjoyed the books we read so far. They constantly questioned the concept of borders and its fluidity. In my introduction, I had restricted myself in defining North American literature and in a way confined myself within a personal border. By reading Ruiz de Burton, Marti and Rivera, I now have a better understanding of North America in its entirety.
1 comment:
I can't tell if I think religion is a controversial topic within the Chicano community. I think Catholicism is a widespread thing in older generations, devout Catholicism. The younger generation, like all younger generations these days, seems to be abandoning a bit, or adopting it less intensely. Rivera makes religion a negative influence, a thing that keeps the characters in their vicious circle of exploitation, while Ruiz de Burton seems to require devotion as a requirement of virtue.
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