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LINKS LETTER KATIE

Dear Helena Maria Viramontes,

            I have admired your work since middle school, when I first got to experience your wonderful literary creativity. While I didn’t necessarily realize how empowering your work was at the time, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to relate to certain situations and circumstances the women in your books are often faced with. As I matured and began to realize my existence as a Latina woman in the U.S., I began to realize how much more there was to your work than just a storyline I could relate to. I began to realize that your work was meant for all Chicanas and Latinas, it was meant to empower them and reconstruct the stereotypes of Latin culture so that we could be proud of our traditions and own them, instead of them owning us. Other writers and authors have also shown me how important it is to fight to be heard, especially through literature that can reach many people. Specifically, Laura E. Perez, who wrote Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities, and the infamous Gloria Anzaldua who wrote Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, both of which we read in class and have the same concepts which you illustrate in your written work, have opened my eyes to the deeper meanings of many Chicana author’s works.


One major concept that is similar in both Chicana Art and your overall work is that which Laura Perez calls “Tierra/Land”. Perez explains that this concept is a about how “the ideas of knowing your place and having a place are tied together and suggest that the personal sense of being at home, whether in society or in your body, whether it is a female, a queer, and immigrant, or a negatively racialized minority body, or a combination of these, is shaped by our sense of belonging socially” (146). This specific point relates to mestizaje, and how many Latinas in the U.S. find themselves being torn between their Latin culture and American culture.
I feel this concept greatly relates and can be applied to the lives of the women characters in various of your works, such as “Growing” and “Moths”, in which women are displaced not only by cultural oppression (poverty, linguistics, and racial prejudice), but also by their sex. Not only are the women controlled by the patriarchal society that we live in, but also by dominant and authoritative figures in their culture which are always men (fathers, boyfriends and husbands). Many of the female characters have a hard time defining who they are in this world, because they have been so closely controlled that they have never had to make their own decisions.


For example, Alice in “Birthday” has to come to terms with her decision to abort, which goes against all her cultural and traditional teachings. The Church has taught her to be pure and nurturing, and she is neither, because she has had sex out of wedlock and she is choosing to abort. This can be related back to Perez’s concept of “Tierra/Land”, in which Alice doesn’t belong in her culture: she has committed the ultimate sin by killing her baby, and she has been empowered by having to make her own decision to abort. She is the ultimate example of a defiant woman in Latin culture and has taken it upon herself to find who she truly is. This goes against everything Latinas are supposed to be, and will ultimately result and her disownment as a Latina woman.
Another major concept that can be found in both Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera and your works is that of intimate terrorism. Anzaldua explains that intimate terrorism happens to Latinas who find themselves living in the borderlands; we are not safe within our own culture or white culture, because we are the constant prey of all men. We are immobilized and said to need protection, when those who are “protecting” us are the ones doing us the most harm. This relates back to many of your short stories, in which women often find themselves in conflict with the men that control their lives.


Intimate terrorism, Anzaldua states, is the choice to feel sorry for ourselves, to feel like victims and to blame others for our oppression. She explains that we have another choice, however. We can take our oppression and empower ourselves, use it to fuel ourselves in taking control over our own lives. This is visible in many of your works, specifically in “The Long Reconciliation” in which the protagonist, Amanda, goes against her oppressive cultural teachings. First, after discovering her sexuality, Amanda turns to sex as one of the only things to look forward to in her life. This alone says a lot about how Amanda has been raised. She has always had to answer to a man in her life, and she was married off almost as a child. She hasn’t had time to mature, develop, experience real-life problems and situations, or even things that interest her, yet she has already been put in a situation where she is supposed to take care of others (her husband and her future children).


Hence, sex becomes the one true pleasure in her life, since she has no other means of excitement. Amanda’s view of sex is deeply troublesome in terms of her Catholic religion. Sex is only meant for procreation, yet Amanda refuses to only have sex to have children. She likes sex and enjoys it, and she doesn’t care that it isn’t “right” for a woman to feel this way about it. Further, she abhors pregnancy, and feels that it threatens her own survival. She feels that the baby wants to kill her, to take her, all of her, and that it will not stop until it gets her. Because of this, she aborts, and much like Alice, goes against her cultural and traditional upbringing and commits one of the most heinous crimes in the eyes of Mexican culture and the Church: killing her baby. Finally, her last stroke against the model of femininity is when she has an affair with Don Joaquin. This not only goes against the sanctions of marriage, but against everything that a “woman” should represent.


She has defied her husband and God, for she has trespassed the boundaries of the model of womanhood (La Virgen de Guadalupe) and has now become a whore and a traitor (La Melinche). Amanda’s choice to act (to do with her own body what she pleased, to enjoy her sexuality and to move outside of her marriage in order to fulfill her needs/desires), refutes the concept of intimate terrorism because she doesn’t stay prisoner of her oppressor’s attempt to control her. Rather, she seeks for a way out, she breaks free of all that holds her prisoner to the “model of femininity” which she has been raised to uphold her entire life, and finally does whatever she pleases.


I feel your works illustrate many concepts which have become common amongst Chicana writers, activists and visual artists, sometimes more subtly (or blatant, for that matter) than others. Many of these concepts deal with women’s oppression by men and patriarchal systems, which have kept us immobilized. However, many Chicana writers share mutual feelings against women feeling victimized, because this only allows us to dwell on what we don’t have instead of actively working for what we want. I feel many of your works create a sense of determination that others may lack, and one which many women, Latina or not, can relate to. The females in your books are so dynamic, and I think that’s also really important to show because it is true to life. No woman is just born free; we have all had to experience the oppression of our sex at one time or another, but only a few of us have decided to take a stand against the “natural” way of things.


Through these concepts and works, I have come to attribute importance to my own voice. I refuse to follow in the footsteps of those women who have been most significant in my life. Rather, I have chosen to take their struggles and make them my own, to realize that they have been faced with many obstacles and oftentimes settled because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do. I don’t want to settle, I don’t want to let a man dictate what I am or am not capable of. That is my job, not his. I refuse to be tied down and amount to nothing. Chicana writers have taught me that. I have a voice; I have just been taught to suppress it. This is perhaps one of the most valuable lessons I have learned from your works as well as many other Chicana writers who have taken it upon themselves to be heard. Keep on doing what you’re doing, you’re an amazing woman and a fantastic writer. I don’t think I would be this aware of my situation and surroundings were it not for your wonderful stories.

 

Sincerely and admiringly,
Katie Ortiz