Rebellion and Tradition in Ana Castillo's So Far from God and Sylvia Lopez-Medina's Cantora

The Chicana "voice" in literature, according to Ramon Saldivar, comprises a discourse that creates "an instructive alternative to the exclusively phallocentric subject of contemporary Chicano narrative" (175). As Cordelia Chavez Candelaria reports, Chicana/ Latina and other women writers have struggled for centuries to attain the right "to express and assert the validity of woman-space and the textured zone of women's experience" (26). Over the last two decades, the body of work that Chicana novelists have contributed to the totality of Chicano artistic discourse has managed to expand the formally predominant socio-political themes of the text so that it now includes the politics of gender. In the process, the Chicana novel has appropriated topics considered taboo in Latino culture: physical and sexual abuse, and heterosexual and lesbian sexuality (Arias and Gonzales-Berry 649). This new discourse is rebellious and can at times become very subversive. Its exploration of previously censored areas holds up an unforgiving mirror to the patriarchal practices of Chicano/Latino culture. Alvina Quintana asserts, while referring directly to Ana Castillo's writings, that the Chicana feminist is "interested in scrutinizing the assumptions that root her own cultural influences, unpacking so called traditions and political institutions that shape patriarchal ways of seeing" ("The Novelist" 74). Although most Chicana novelists address similar feminist preoccupations in their writings, they employ vastly different discursive strategies in their narratives. They may tell similar stories, but the form, vision, and tone with which they approach their objective reflect the heterogeneity that exists in the Chicana novel. Evidence of this difference arises when we compare Ana Castillo's So Far From God (1994) and Sylvia Lopez-Medina's Cantora (1993). Both works tell of the losses and hardships in the lives of the female characters, and of how these women find the strength to survive. Nevertheless, the discourses that Castillo and Lopez-Medina employ reside at opposite ends of the narrative spectrum. So Far From God is a novel that incites rebellion against the norms and values of Chicano patriarchal society while Cantora, although calling for changes, always does so within a framework that respects centuries' worth of traditions and cultural beliefs. This essay compares the importance that naming, gender relations, and religion play in the development of the female characters. It also examines how the novelistic discourse of Castillo and Lopez-Medina either calls for rebellion or demonstrates a deep respect for tradition. In Women Singing in the Snow, Tey Diana Rebolledo recognizes the importance that naming plays in the "struggle for interpretive power." A central concept in marginalized American cultures, naming describes and therefore expresses the identity of the named. Under patriarchy, naming constitutes a tool of domination through its power to symbolically confine the named within the parameters of an imposed gender identity. Naming, however, can also function as a tool for empowering self-definition, a means by which to redefine women's identity and reject imposed descriptions of the self. Rebolledo states that "Chicanas are very much engaged in an articulation of accurate naming and the acceptance of all the cultural and social premises that lie behind the `names'" (103). Ana Castillo's So Far From God reflects the positive dynamics of naming. The novel has Sofia, the embodiment of "wisdom," at its core, a mother who survives the death of her four daughters: Esperanza, Fe, Caridad, and La Loca. The names of the first three daughters denote the three major Christian ideals. However, in the cruelest of ironies, the destiny of each of these characters is the antithesis of the ideal the name represents. Esperanza, the most liberated of the sisters, devotes the energy of her college years to the Chicano Movement. …