Catherine Louvier

In Praise of Traditional Women

In the traditional/modern binary, “traditional” has to do with “traditions,” like values or behavior that fall away as people move into “modern” life. When applied to women, “traditional” more often has to do with values or behavior that people would like to throw away as they move into modern life. Generally speaking, traditional ideas are stifled, while traditional women are stifling. However, this axiom does not hold true in minority literature, where the view of traditional women is more complex. In minority literature, traditional women are often the vortex of the work. A close reading of Bless Me Ultima, “Green Chile,” Woman Hollering Creek, and Love Medicine shows, that in minority literature, traditional women are more than peripheral metaphors.   

In Rudolph Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima, Tony’s mother, Maria Márez, is a character most people would recognize as a traditional Mexican or Mexican-American  wife and mother. As is usually the case with such women, she deeply venerates the Virgin of Guadalupe standing on her dark, horned moon. In fact, at one point, Maria merges with Guadalupe.Tony dreams:  “Then a huge golden moon came down from the heavens and settled on the surface of the calm waters. I looked toward the enchanting light, expecting to see the Virgin of Guadalupe, but in her place I saw my mother” (119-20). Throughout the novel Anaya interweaves images of Tony’s mother, the Virgin, and the moon.

Syncretism is attractive as long as the two merging cultures are clear, but a blended product is less palatable. The reader can appreciate Ultima’s religious syncretism because the old and the new are dichotomized and then swirled together. In a close reading, Ultima and Maria both ascribe to Marian devotion, but while Ultima seems sanctified because of her connection to traditional spirituality, Maria seems superstitious and overly pious because of her connection to the church. Devoted to syncretic Catholicism, Maria seems to move through the story pleading the case for the Virgin and the Church.

Devotion to religion and family makes Maria the driving force behind Tony’s academic and cultural education. Gabriel scoffs on his son’s first day of school (54) but we later learn: “Many of the old people did not accept the new language and refused to let their children speak it, but my mother believed that if I was to be successful as a priest I should know both languages, and so she encouraged both” (180). She also makes sure that Tony spends his time with her brothers to learn “the old secret ways in farming” (179). So, while Maria is assigned selfish motives, she is the one who makes sure that Tony retains his cultural ties while enforcing the precepts of Objective 5c (literacy is the primary code of modern existence).

Something about Ultima’s religious practice seems more authentic than Maria’s. However, Ultima comes from the same people as Gabriel, the men of the llanos, descendants of conquistadores. They are like the children of Cortez and la Malinche. Maria’s forbearers were indigenous farmers (like Juan Diego). This means that Ultima’s brand of spirituality is not more pure than Maria’s, only less familiar. 

The novel contains a complex blend of spiritual awakening and cultural roots, but (in a narrow scope) it can be distilled down to a contest between the father (conquistadores) and the mother (indigenous peasants). It seems the conquistadores won again. While Ultima’s spiritual path seems nobler, the story has a familiar ending. Anaya writes: “‘Take them to their room,’ I said to my mother. It was the first time I had ever spoken to my mother as a man; she nodded and obeyed” (259). This passage shows women a double minority: being treated as a minority within the minority culture (Objective 2a)

Bless Me Ultima incorporates the image of The Virgin of Guadalupe as an insidious presence in Mexican-American culture (Objective 2). However, it seems as though the Virgin is a limitation that Tony must break free of in order find his spiritual identity (3c: ambivalent minority).  Anaya does not suggest that Guadalupe should be tossed out, just that she should be fitted into a framework. While this sounds like a step towards authenticity, it also undermines the story of Juan Diego and the Virgin as an origin story. It says that the Virgin was not the beginning of the story. If one sees Maria as Guadalupe (as Anaya suggests) the last thing Tony does is silence her.  

In “Green Chile,” Jimmy Santiago Baca seems to honor traditional women. In the poem, he uses chilies as a metaphor for cultural belonging. In the three stanzas, Baca separates the male from the female using divisions somewhat like those in Anaya’s novel. However, Baca’s poem focuses more on the love of the mother than the independent agency of the father. In doing so, he makes the maternal role the point of reference for people of the border, while revealing a deep appreciation for maternal tending.  

In the first stanza, he identifies himself with red chile and describes them in terms of traditionally masculine society. He creates a festive air, describing strings of dried red chile decorating doors and roofs. He associates them with the male sphere of business and commerce by including them in vegetable stands. By using the term “historical grandeur” he gives an impression of age, somehow “grandfathering” the red chile. This will balance nicely with the “grandmother-ed” green chile of the next stanza. He finishes this masculine stanza by equating the sound of rustling dried chilies with “the tongues of old men licking in the breeze.” 

In the second stanza, he links green chilies to his grandmother and talks about them using female imagery. He begins the stanza with “But grandmother loves green chile.”  Grandmothers always have a “but.” The line could mean disappointment (“but I can’t because grandmother won’t let me”) or excitement (but I can because grandmother says so). This “but” bespeaks authority as a maternal force.

 Her “wrinkled hands” seem no match for the voluptuous, masculine entity simmering in the pot. But, Baca transform the little grandmother hands into something powerful and passionate, describing her cooking like a contest between her and a sexually charged anthropomorphized chile. She gradually turns back into a grandmother once she conquers the beast and makes it food.

The terminology that Baca uses to describe his grandmother’s cooking is highly erotic. He suggests that she serves green chile con carne “to her little prince” with a hint of bloodlust in her eye, proud of her kill, like a lion bringing food to her cubs. Reacting in kind, he “slurps”  his food as his mouth burns. The final line in the stanza, “and I hiss and drink a tall glass of cold water,” sounds like full satisfaction.

In the final stanza, Baca summons up images of men and women bringing and cooking green chile from all over the borderlands to New Mexico. It is interesting that Baca does not differentiate across any boarders. He names towns and cities on both sides of the Rio Grande and across stateliness. All of these people and places are held together with a single common thread: green chile. Since the green chile is the domain of the grandmother, Baca is saying that all of the border people are held together by the traditions of the grandmother. This is an interesting twist to objective 2a. While her role looks subordinated from the outside, she looks like a cultural nexus from the inside.

While Baca describes it in very passionate terms, the grandmother is simply taking care of her grandchild, like all of the other grandmothers do. He seems to appreciate the passion that goes into the seemingly mundane things done by the kind women who pray the rosary before a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

In class, Juan said that this poem reminded him of his own grandmother. Mixing his comments, the poem, and things I learned about our Lady of Guadalupe, I can understand how Mexican and Mexican American women really are often respected for roles that most of us see as subservient.

In contrast, in “Mericans” from Woman Hollering Creek (17), Sandra Cisneros calls her grandmother “the awful grandmother.”

As girl and her brothers play near the church steps, “the awful grandmother” kneels inside a darkened church, praying for a list of people who do not know or care about her prayers. All the while, the children must stay near the door; they are not allowed to buy balloons or play freely.

 Cisneros describes the grandmother’s blessing herself, kissing her thumb, saying the rosary and “Mumbling, mumbling, mumbling.” While the grandmother is praying inside the church, an American woman offers the children gum in broken Spanish, asking to take their picture. When they speak English to one another, she is surprised and the boy says, “Yeah…we’re Mericans.” She finishes the story with “we’re Mericans, and inside the awful grandmother prays.”

The children hold the awful grandmother in such contempt because her method of praying makes them seem so foreign. They are tied to their praying grandmother in the same way they are tied to the church steps. In addition, the phraseology makes it sound as though the grandmother is inside the children: she binds them from within.

In this story, Cisneros makes another twist on objective 2a by effectively making the grandmother a triple-minority. As the focus of the Cisneros ire,  the awful grandmother  is  subordinated by the subordinated women of the subordinated minority. It is tempting to say that the author is not really criticizing the awful grandmother, but uses her as an umbrella metaphor for traditional culture. However, such denigration of traditional women’s behavior is a pattern in Cisneros’s work.

Later in the book, in “Little Miracles, Kept promises,” (124) Cisneros writes about Virgencita de Guadalupe, saying: “for a long time I wouldn’t let you in my house. I couldn’t see you without seeing my ma …I couldn’t look at your folded hands without seeing my abuella mumbling…I wasn’t going to be my mother or my grandma. All that self-sacrifice, all that silent suffering. Hell no. Not here. Not me. ”

Her saying “couldn’t” and “wasn’t” suggests that a change was coming. However, while she learned to accept the Virgin of Guadalupe, she did so by cutting her mother and her grandmother out of the picture. Rather than espouse the traditional Virgin, Cisneros merges Guadalupe with pre-Columbian goddesses fabricated her own syncretic model.

One must look at Love Medicine when examining the role of traditional women in minority literature, but since the book questions the meaning of “tradition,” doing so is complicated. Marie and Lulu are both traditional in the sense that they are American Indians and they play traditional roles in their families. However, there is nothing traditional about either of their lives. This is not simply because they are unconventional women (although they are), but because traditional behavior was so thoroughly disrupted in the American Indian community. As a result, they act is accordance with the loss and survival pattern of Objective 3b.

The Loss and Survival pattern makes the relationship of Indians to Objective 5c contradictory. While Albertine and Lyman recognize that education is the key to their futures, the trauma of the Indian Schools makes the older people leery. Therefore they try to escape the schools and hide from the system. Also, both older and younger Indians like Lipshaw and Moses Pillager see formal education as abandonment of their Indian heritage.

The double- minority effect in this book that is unlike any of the others. Rather than being subordinated, the women are abandoned. While there are actually more male characters in the book, Love Medicine revolves around women. The women stay anchored. In this, Love Medicine has a lot in common with Bless Me Ultima. The Lunas are tied to the earth while the men of the llanos must ride free.

In these examples of minority literature, traditional women take center stage. In addition, the stories and poems considered here were written by both men and women.  This is not generally the case in literature of the dominant culture. While female authors often focus on female characters, male authors almost never do. It could be that men do not want to intrude into women’s domain out of respect, but that seems unlikely. Perhaps women in this progressive society should look at their repressed sisters with a less critical eye.