Title: Home girls
First published: 1996
Description: Chicana writers in the United States write to inspire social change, to challenge patriarchal and homophobic culture, to redefine traditional gender roles, to influence the future. Alvina E. Quintana examines how Chicana writers engage literary convention, through fiction, poetry, drama, and autobiography, as a means of addressing these motives.

Her analysis of the writings of Gloria Anzaldua, Ana Castillo, Denise Chavez, Sandra Cisneros, and Cherrie Moraga addresses a multitude of issues: the social and political forces that influenced the Chicana aesthetic; Chicana efforts to open a dialogue about the limitations of both Anglo-American feminism and Chicano nationalism; experimentations with content and form; the relationship between imaginary writing and self-reflexive ethnography; and performance, domesticity, and sexuality.

Employing anthropological, feminist, historical, and literary sources, Quintana explores the continuity found among Chicanas writing across varied genres - a drive to write themselves into discourse.
Subjects: Mexican Americans in literature, Mexican American women, Mexican American authors, Intellectual life, History and criticism, American literature, Women authors, Women and literature, Mexican American women in literature, History, Women in literature, Latin american literature, history and criticism
Places: United States
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS153.M4 Q56 1996