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Jeannine Stanko
Dr. Kerr
ENGL 956
30 April 2009
Xicanisma in Ana Castillos So Far from God: An analysis of Xicanisma as Third-World rather
than First-World Feminism
Xicanisma, or Chicana feminism, analyzes historical, political, economic, and social roles
of Mexican-American women in the United States. During the American feminist movement of
the 1970s, Chicanas formed the Comision Femenil Mexicana Nacional (National Mexican
Womens Commission) to enhance the achievements of Mexican and Chicana women, and try
to forge relationships with other women organizations across the United States (Chicana, Par.
7). Xicanisma specifically addresses Chicana literature in ways that other feminist theories
cannot. According to Geraldine Heng, first work feminists risk unfairly applying first world
ideals and concepts to third world womens issues (861 873). Analysis of Chicana novelist Ana
Castillos So Far from God will illustrate that the principles of Xicansima are more closely
aligned with the ideologies of third-world feminisms than with those of the first world.
Third-World feminism is haunted by its historical origins, which continue to
overshadow its character and future prospects (Heng 861). The historical and cultural norm of
silencing Chicana women inhibits Chicanas in ways deemed archaic by white, first world
feminisms. In So Far from God, Sofi raises her four daughters as a single mother after her
husband, Domingo, left her. This abandonment created sympathetic animosity between Sofi and
the other women in the community. Following her daughter Fes abandonment by Tom, Sofi
confronts his mother. Mrs. Torres well-aimed rebuttal is Just be glad he left your daughter
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when he did. You know how men are (Castillo, So 31). This comment succeeds in further
dividing women who should be united in abolishing oppressions implemented by patriarchy.
Women, like Mrs. Torres, who choose to abide by patriarchal constraints use excuses to justify
the actions of men rhat than to hold men accountable. According to Mrs. Torres, Fe should be
grateful that Tom left her before she had to endure his genders inherent characteristics. Mrs.
Torress well-aimed comment also references Sofis own plights with Domingo. In contrast to
ChicanasAmerican girls are encouraged to become independentAnglo women are thus
socialized into the dominant cultural virtues of competition and are privileged in the world of
men (Dicochea 84). Culturally, Chicanas are expected to remain at home with men provide for
the family. The dialectic between first-world and third-world creates cognizant dissonance within
Chicanas and increases tensions within families. Compounding matters, and oftentimes forcing
Chicana women and their families to accept first-world feminist ideals, is the fact that most
Chicano/Latino men do not earn enough to support their families; their wives must go outside the
home to earn and income (or bring it home in the form of piece work) (Castillo, Massacre 37).
Permitting or forcing Chicana women to leave the home for work creates opportunities for
breaking the silence imposed by Chicanas and Anglos. If the Chicana accepts the values
considered Anglo, such as womens independence and educational and career advancement, she
is often labeled la mujer mala (Dicochoea 81).
Sofis labels altered when she remembered that Domingo had not left her; she had kicked
him out. The fact that this one little detail was forgotten by Sofi and everybody else in the
community suggests that there were no other roles for women beyond wife/mother or abandoned
wife/mother (Delgadillo, par. 53). The voice of Sofis newfound internal strength, derived from
the deaths of her daughters, broke the patriarchal imposition of silence. She ran for mayor of
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Tome, kicked Domingo out again, and created the organization for Mothers of Martyrs and
Saints (M.O.M.A.S.). In a society in which it is difficult to maintain collaboration and
collectiveness, Sofi achieved unity with her fellow Latinas resulting in the intersubjective and
collective experiences of nationness, community interest, [and] cultural values (Johnson, par.
1).
Sofis unity in her community and nationally amongst other members of M.O.M.A.S. is a
primary step towards feminism in the third world. Through the glass of First-World feminism,
Third-World feminisms appear to be willfully nave, nativist, or essentialist in their ideological
stakes (Heng 864). Through the scope of first-world feminisms, the plights and struggles
deemed as Third World seem base and somewhat archaic. This is because the uniting of
Chicanas through the lens of Xicanisma did not begin until first-world feminist entered its
second phase. This historical context is important in order to understand that this naivety,
nativism, and essentialism denote key principles in building a foundation to further third-world
feminism. In third-world countries of Southeast Asia, for example, many women are just
beginning to form unregistered organizations. Many are simple small groups of women, made
up frequently of trusted friends (872). During the Way of the Cross Procession on a Holy
Friday, one womans address to the crowd signifies a major connection to third-world feminism
and a break from the first. She stated the following while holding her brain damaged and
cancerous child in her arms:
We hear about what environmentalists care about out there. We live on dry land
but we care about saving the whales and rain forests, too. Of course we do. Our
people have always known about the interconnectedness of things; and the
responsibility we have to Our Mother, and to seven generations after our own.
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But we, as a people, are being eliminated from the ecosystem toolike the
dolphins, like the eagle; and we are trying very hard now to save ourselves before
its too late. Dont anybody care about that? (Castillo, So 242)
The womans allusions to Ecofeminism can arguably be classified as signifiers of first-world
feminism. Her final question to the crowd, however, marks the difference of Xicanisma from
first-world feminism through the indication that Chicana concerns and demands for their rights
and saving themselves from patriarchal oppressions must come at the same time that they are
committed to community values before they too are eliminated. According to Geraldine Heng, a
resistance to the totalizing implications of modernization is invariably solidified at some juncture
of the modernization process despite third-world nations desideratum of development (863).
Although Chicanas want to live in a modernized society, one which cares about and is
responsible for saving and improving the environment, their cultural struggle still lies on the
foundation of basic needs for survival. This is a core dilemma: allegiance to the community or
nation sometimes conflicts with feminist aspirations. The necessity of fulfilling individualistic
basic needs trumps the desires for environmental sustainability and improvements. However,
destruction of the environment does not align with Chicana ideals, so thus begins the necessary
redefining of both feminisms in order to specifically confront Chicana ideals.
A threat to Chicana survival, as deemed by the basic principles of Xicanisma, is racism.
Although women everywhere experience life differently from men everywhere, white women
are members of a race that has proclaimed itself globally superior for hundreds of years
(Castillo, Massacre 23-24). Therefore, many minority women view first-world feminisms as
battles which did not take into account the race and class differences of women of color (34).
So Far from God depicts two examples of racial differences through relationships held with
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white women by Francisco al Penitente and Reuben. Following his return from the Vietnam War,
Franciscos love for a girl with sky-blue eyes and long blond hair caused him to enroll in a
college full of privileged white girls. Immediately after this girl moved on to other men, the
defeated Francisco dropped out of college reverting to mechanics and santerismo, or maker of
boleros (99 100). Although this girl possessed a lack of encumbrance by material things like
money, she was from an upper-middle class neighborhood in which she was presented with a
choice to have or have-not (99). Unlike non-minority youths of 1969, Francisco realized that
Chicanos in the United States have been prevented from benefiting from many of the privileges
available to gringos due to racism, sexism and their poor to working class backgrounds
(Castillo, Massacre 214). This disenfranchisement over his marginalization in Anglo society
[affected] his individual psyche (Delgadillo, par. 37). Thus, Francisco devoted his life to the
patriarchy of Catholicism. Through his devotion to an institution that oppresses women,
Francisco negated his feelings of inferiority in the white world.
By altering Franciscos perspective to one of a woman, his experience is equitable to the
ostracism felt by young Chicanos in the face of white dominant couture, consumer fever, and
race and class privilege. Those who are light-skinned attempt to assimilate whereas those who
are dark-skinned must depend upon their own resources (Castillo, Massacre 137). One such
resource furthers comparisons to other third-world feminists. Xicanistas have to educate white
feminist groups on their political, cultural, and philosophical differences (33). Comparisons of
sexism experienced by white middle class women to racism experienced by African-Americans
are controversial (33). Chicanas are neither black nor white but face oppressions implemented by
both isms. This ignorance of whites felt by Chicanas regarding their struggles in society,
history, and culture create animosity resulting in further divisions of Xicanisma from first-world
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feminism. Esperanzas former boyfriend, Reuben, also attempted assimilation only to have his
blond wife and coyote kid leave him in the aspiration of broadening her horizons and
freeing herself from her provincial upbringing in which the most tumultuous event had been
living with braces through high school (Castillo, So 35, 240). Reubens experience further
demonstrates the cultural separations that exist between third- and first-world feminism. Latinas
view comparisons to Anglo women, stereotyped as the women chosen by Francisco and Reuben,
as great injustices and are divisive and threatening to the strength of the movement (Dicochea
83).
Dicochea further states that following the National Political Womens Caucus
Convention in 1972, Chicana feminists came to a realization:
Nieto-Gomez was among those Chicanas writing about how the racism they
experienced at the conventionfurther convinced Chicana feminists that they
needed to work for womens causes on their own terms. (84)
Like Sofi, Xicanistas have found their voices to resist acculturation and assimilation suggested
by first-world feminists to combat all patriarchal oppressions. Sonia Saldivar-Hull articulates that
for the Chicana feminists it is through our affiliation with the struggles of other Third World
people that we find our theories and our methods (Delgadillo, par. 58). The goals of first-world
feminisms are too far removed and advanced to address the needs of Xicanistas. Sofi exemplifies
the notion of how redefine[ing]roles withinfamilies, communities at large, and white
dominant society,Xicanisma helps [Chicanas] to be self-confident and assertive regarding the
pursuit of [their] needs and desires (Castillo, Massacre 40). Unlike Franciscos and Reubens
women, Xicanistas have not gained the choices expressed by these women to have/have not or to
broaden their horizons. Like third-world feminists, Xicanistas are attempting to aggregate
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strength in the face of Anglo dominance, while still being held tight by the reins of Mexican
traditions (122). Homi Bhabha furthers this argument by elucidating that waves of advancement
within the sphere of oppressions felt by Chicana feminists break the historical, racial silence that
is overlooked by first-world feminism:
redefining the signifying relation to a disjunctive present by staging the past as a
symbol, myth, memory, history, the ancestral but a past whose iterative value as
sign reinscribes the lessons of the past into the very textuality of the present, the
postcolonial subject, the subordinated, the native, determines her identification
with and interrogation of modernity. (Degadillo, par. 8)
Many first-world feminisms did not have to contend with racial oppressions in addition to gender
oppressions. Chicanas do and, therefore, must use symbols and lessons from the past to
understand the present and to also understand their roles within the present. These historical
guides are used to account for and help solve current problems.
Castillo offers another dissidence of Xicanisma from first-world feminism through the
actions of Esperanza. Sofis oldest daughter emphasizes Xicanismas ties to nationalism as an
indication to third-world feminist sympathies. Heng discusses the history of these ties:
Historically, almost without exception, feminism has arisen in the Third World in
tandem with nationalist movements whether in form of anticolonial/anti-
imperialist struggles, national modernization and reform movements, or religious-
nationalist cultural-nationalist revivalisms. (861)
In So Far from God, Esperanza spends her college years studying and struggling for Chicano
equality. Reuben laments about Esperanzas actions:
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Back in college, if it wasnt for la Esperanza who led the protest, they never
would have had one Chicano Studies class offered on the curriculum. If it wasnt
for la Esperanza, who would have known about the struggle of the United Farm
Workers on campus? How would he have known about Salvador Allende of Chile
removed by a military coup, or heard Victor Jara, the protest singer, or been told
about his beautiful guitar-playing hands being smashed by soldiers rifle butts?
(239 240)
The Chicano Movement, or El Movimiento, battled for farm workers rights, restoration of land
grants, education equality, voting and political rights, and awareness of a collective history.
Esperanzas involvement in El Movimiento symbolizes strong ties to the concept of nationalism.
She wishes to improve the lives and opportunities of all Chicanos. Her pursuit of racial equality
exhibits Hengs statement that feminist movements in the Third World have almost always
grown out the same historical soil, and at a similar historical moment, as nationalism (862).
Oftentimes, feminist movements in the Third World must work in conjunction with nationalist
movements in order to gain support, achieve accomplishments, and avoid accusations of anti-
nationalism. Another detriment to movements in the Third World is the interventionist role of
the state as a regulatory, juridical, administrative, or military force and the active role of
dissenter imprisonment (863). In order to avoid state intervention and maintain the force of
numbers, third-world feminisms must coincide with nationalism. Aligning with nationalism also
serves as a strategic response of a Third-World feminism to deny the assertion that feminism
is of foreign origin and influence, and therefore implicitly or expressly antinational (864).
Third-world feminisms alignments with nationalism include the following components:
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seeking legitimation and ideological support in local cultural history, by finding
feminist or proto-feminist myths, laws, customs, characters, narratives, and
origins in the national or communal past or in strategic interpretation of religious
history or law. (864)
Esperanzas relationship with Reuben progressively leads her to consider this integration of El
Movemiento with her own history and the history of the Mexican nation [to] confront the
present (Dicochea 83).
In college, she dates Reuben, who at the time called himself Cuauhtemoc, and further
explores her cultural heritage through the Native-American Church and sweat lodges. The sweat
lodge is an ancient native practice[that] is not only physically beneficial but does in fact give
[the] emotional [self] a sense of rejuvenation (Castillo, Massacre 147). Through these
connections to her ancestral roots, Esperanza discovers oppressions of the patriarchal Chicano
society. Reuben teaches her the role of women and the role of men and how they were not to be
questioned (Castillo, So 36). Esperanza doesnt have any women friends through the Church or
at the sweat lodges to contradict Reuben; Esperanza meekly follows these dictated roles.
However, Reubens condemnation of her journalism career eventually causes her to choose to
end the relationship. Esperanza feels oppressed and demeaned by the patriarchal demands of the
Native-American Church and sweat lodges, just as the Xicanistas felt oppressed and demeaned
by El Moviemiento. Esperanza longed to consolidate the spiritual with the practical side of
things especially since she paid for all the food, gas, telephone calls, and [left] tens and
twentieson his bedroom dresser with money made at that job which he suspected her so
much of selling out to white society for (Castillo, So 37, 39).
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Reuben manipulated Esperanza into becoming a socioeconomic resource to fund his
ancestral lifestyle. Heng explains that the manipulation of womens issues as an ideological and
political resource in Third-World nationalist history commonly develops into the manipulation of
women themselves as a socioeconomic resource in Third-World nation-states (862). Once
Esperanza realizes that Reubens contradictions regarding her career and ancestral spirituality are
further exploiting her to advance his patriarchal motivations, she accepts a job in Washington
D.C. A nationalist version [of the Chicano Movement] prefers to see [women] as an Indian
woman who is lamenting over her lost race after the Conquest (Castillo, Massacre 109). This
reference to La Malinche indicates the imbedded patriarchy of Chicano culture and Esperanzas
acceptance of this job offers escape from these oppressions. Xicanistas realized the differences
amongst ideologies of first-world feminists and members of the Chicano movement:
[They] formed their own organizations in order to successfully pursue womens
issues, revealing the continued resistance Chicana feminists faced within
Chicana/o communities, Anglo feminist communities, and the public at large.
Even those social problems that complied with traditionalists views about
womans domain and role such as meeting day care and family needs, and
taking action against forced sterilization were not priorities for regular
organizations. (Dicochea 88)
Esperanza and Xicanistas rejected the umbrellas of the past in order to specifically attend to their
needs.
Esperanzas response to Reubens teachings surrounding the entrenched notion that
woman exists only to propagate the species and to be a mans mother throughout his adult life,
but that women are conditioned to desire this status despite the reality of their experiences was
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to attempt assimilation into a world outside of her own (Castillo, Massacre 54). By leaving her
home and the Chicano Movement, to pursue a high-powered career in the white media, she is
kidnapped and killed in Saudi Arabia while covering a white mans war (Johnson, par. 26).
Esperanzas attempts at assimilation ended her life through tortures worse than the imposition of
patriarchy. Esperanza failed to acknowledge that Xicanistas are feminists who are also members
of a racial minority, [they] are Chicanas (Dicochea 79). Xicanisma, as a faction of the Chicano
Movement, wants to improve opportunities for all Chicanos but also wants to address more
womanly issues. The strength of both movements is through numbers, acceptance of one
anothers issues in terms of nationalism, and assistance in terms of particular agendas. Similarly,
feminism in Singapore and Malaysia arose as a subset of nationalist politics, so that the
hierarchical relationship of feminism to nationalism an asymmetry of tension and use was
plainly visible from the outset (Heng 865). Like Xicanisma and third-world feminisms, Castillo
shows that Esperanza needed to retain previously laid foundations and maintain unity with other
Chicanos to further collective and not individual agendas.
Castillo furthers Xicanismas attachment to the third-world feminists ideology of
collective unity through Fes attempted assimilation into the American Dream. Ashamed of her
familys self-defeating and unambitious natures, Fe attempts to fulfill her ideas of the
American Dream (Castillo, So 28). She works in a bank, maintain[s] her image above all from
the organized desk at work to weekly manicured fingernails and a neat coiffure, and prepares to
wed he high school sweetheart (28). However, this perfect dream life is ruined by Tom who
breaks the engagement. Fe lets out a loud continuous scream that only ceases when she sleeps
(30). This incessant screaming damages her vocal chords leaving her to communicate only
through broken speech. Toms susto, or inability to open his heart, briefly silences Fes faith
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in the American Dream (32). After she stops screaming, she returns to her previous employment
at a bank with limited advancement opportunities and further exploitation as an underpaid
Mexican worker (Castillo, Massacre 37). Fe, intent on achieving the American Dream, marries
her first cousin, moves away from her family and community, and begins a new job at Acme
International. According to Delgadillo, Fes desires dictate her actions:
Fe spurns her family in her drive to assimilate. Her uncritical acceptance of the
hegemonic discourse of middle-class America imposes distance between Fe and a
family not considered typically American in such discourse because of its gender
composition, race, ethnicity, and culture. (par. 51)
Her self-imposed isolation contributes to [an eternal] silence and passivity that eventually kills
her (Delgadillo, par. 51).
Castillo construes that due to my mestisaje I descend from a labor force long exploited
by Anglo capitalism: therefore, it is true that I have certain social bonds with women of third
world countries (Castillo, Massacre 69). Fes misplaced faith in capitalist institutions further
links Xicanisma to third-world feminisms. Fe was passed up twice for promotion at the bank
and remained in New Accounts without so much as a prospect to get a real raise, neither. She
was finally told that although the company did not want to discriminate against her new
handicap, her irregular speech did not lend itself to working with the public (Castillo, So 177).
Speech is tied to cultural identity or in Fes case the Chicano ancestry which she wishes to
forget. W.E.B. Dubois theorizes the concept of two-ness for those who experience the twin
existence of expressing loyal[ty] to a nation while yet a victim of its prejudice against the
minority ethnic group (Rivkin 1073). Fes speech aggrandized her struggle towards the
American Dream as an already oppressed Chicana minority; she listened to a former coworker
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and left the bank to make twice what [she did] at the bank (Castillo, So 177). Fe followed her
capitalist dreams to compete in a racist and sexist lower skilled work force that through silence
and death rendered [her] invisible by society except as a stereotype and in other denigrating
ways (Castillo, Massacre 41).
Silencing Fe succeeds in silencing women and subsequent feminisms. Acme
International, representative of large corporations in third-world economies, primarily employs
non-white women, - Mexicans/Chicanas, Filipinas, Malaysians, and others who comprise
eight percent of the global factory work force. These women are the greatest dispensable
resource that multination interests own (24). Fe buys with her own hard-earned money from all
the bonuses she earned at her new jobthe long-dreamed-of automatic dishwasher, microwave,
Cuisinart, and the VCR to flaunt her new wealth and attainment of the American Dream
(Castillo, So 171). Her long-desired achievement is abolished by a cancer diagnosis resulting
from chemical misuse at Acme International. Symbolically, this relates to the inability of
Chicanas to attain the American Dream in direct comparison to the exploitation of women in the
third world. Xicanism, like third-world feminism, must overcome the difficulty of unifying such
movement[s]on the basis of ethnicity. According to Castillo, the American Dream is a
singular desire and not in the best interests of a communal society:
the promise of the unattainable American Dream in a country ridden with
commodity fever focuses the individual on elevating the self not on general
improvement of society as a whole. Competition not community is the
motivation. (Massacre 53 54)
Fe, like Esperanza, turns her back on the community or nationalist endeavors to further her own
existence through misguided assimilation. According to Audre Lorde, joining with others in
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battle is essential to ones own freedom: Without community, there is no liberation, only the
most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression
(Delgadillo, par. 55).
Fes final days serve as attempts to use her broken voice for the final time. She returns to
disparaging news at Acme International:
the whole plant had been completely remodeled in the short time since she had
been let goall the stationswhich used to be open to everybody and
everything, were partitioned off. Nobody and nothing able to know what was
going on around them no more. And everybody, meanwhile, was working in
silence as usual. (Castillo, So 189)
Fes screams at the foreman concerning the chemicals that robbed her of living a life like people
do on T.V. reverberated against partitions warning no one within their assigned working spaces
(189). Fes observation indicates a developing class-consciousness that was previously blocked
by her acceptance of dominant discourses (Delgadillo, par. 51). Her stripped yearning towards
assimilation, the American Dream, and who had all her life sought to escape her mothers
depressing home with its smell of animal urine and hot animal breath and its couch and cobijas
that itched with ticks and fleas (Castillo, So 171). Aided in the tardy re-evaluation of her
cultural, ethnic, and racial consciousness (Delgadillo, par. 51). Fes overdue efforts towards
collective unity exhibited by attempts to warn the other women fail. In attempting to assimilate
into the American Dream the edges of womans own personal sense of identity are blurred;
[Fe] ultimately fits nowhere, is accepted nowhere and dies as an invisible, silenced woman
(Castillo, Massacre 51).
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So Far from God begins with the death and resurrection of Sofis youngest daughter, La
Loca indicative that this will be a story about the recovery of Chicana power and voice
(Delgadillo, par. 18). Xicanismas reclamation of the Chicana voice resonates through its
confrontation of the patriarchal Catholic Church as a social constraint upon spirituality. Caridad
and dona Felicia, as curanderas, combine Christianity with ancient methods of healing to
renegotiate the oppressions inflicted by organized religion upon women and their subsequent
beliefs as mestizas or Amerindians. Castillo discusses this history in regards to first-world
feminisms:
attempt to re-appropriate womans spirituality came via asserting a matriarchal
time, said to have preceded recorded history, during which the Great Mother
Goddess was worshipped. As non-white feminists in the United States became
more visible, they expressed a contention to the White Womans Movements
emphasis on the White Mother Goddess. (Massacre 150)
This served as a healing process for middle class, educated, white women (Castillo, Massacre
150). Racial interpretations of the origins of spirituality further the dissension between first-
world feminisms and Xicanisma.
Caridad and dona Felicias work as curanderas [reclaim] woman-centered spirituality in
which women are also healers (Delgadillo, par. 40). Catholicism as a hierarchical and
patriarchal institution has alienated many Xicanistas who strive to free themselves from
oppression but yet feel that religion and spirituality are tied to their identities:
The tendency of patriarchy is an eventual phallocentric rising up of structures,
pyramids, and high rises, unholy stones piled up, as men separate themselves
from other men to strive toward higher levels of stature, always sanctioned by a
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Sun God elevated to the remote eternal sanctity of the astros. Women, on the
other hand, in their reproductive role are methodically lowered in social status,
down to the earth, below the depths of the murky ocean. (Castillo, Massacre 107)
Men have built structural idols in order to bring themselves closer to God and the heavens.
Women, on the other hand, as mothers and caregivers, are more in-tune with Mother Earth. This
dichotomy empowers men to overpower or oppress women. Xicanistas cannot simply renounce
this patriarchal institution but must find ways to negotiate their faith in ways that alleviate the
gender oppression typical of Catholicism. These ideals are evidenced on a pilgrimage to
Chimayo, in which the curanderas wear Raiders caps evoking images of conquerors or
archeologists. During this pilgrimage, Caridad falls in love with Esmeralda, an act which furthers
an emphasis on communities of women, a Chicana feminism fueled by a woman-centered
spirituality emerges to challenge the subjugation of women within and without Chicana/o
cultures, the marginalization of other sectors of United States society, and the destruction of the
environment (Delgadillo, par. 1).
The patriarchal Catholic Church dictates womens bodies through abortion, birth control,
and sexuality mandates. This regulation of female fidelity from a historical economic viewpoint
had more to do with mans view of woman as property and his children as heirs to his property
than a transgression of love and morals (Castillo, Massacre 70). Catholicism needs members
and since women are the creatrix, control and oppression is crucial for its survival. In
patriarchal institutions, women are to be fulfilled by fulfilling the needs of men (117).
Caridads and Esmeraldas relationship denigrated male sexuality and threatens mans control
of an economic resource (Johnson, par. 12). Francisco al Penitente, already questioning his
sexuality, views their lesbianism as a direct threat to himself and the patriarchal community of
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the Church. Esmeraldas rape serves as punishment for Esmeralda, who trespasses onto
Franciscos property by loving Caridad and, more significantly, who crosses the rigid, virtually
impassable border that restricts women to heterosexual desire, when they are allowed desire at
all. Esmeralda is harshly punished for what is an act of resistance (par. 23). This view of women
as commodities further links Castillos novel and Xicanisma to feminisms in the Third World.
The Singapore Girl of Singapore Airlines (SIA) uses the concept of Asian complacency to sell
travel tickets. Subsequently Singapore Airlines trumps all other Asian airlines in terms of
economic success:
States also profit from the manipulation of women and feminine identity as an
economic resourceand underscores the necessarily oppositional relationship
between feminist interests and state-sponsored descriptions of the national interest
in the contemporary third world. (Heng 867).
National interests, that serve primarily male agendas, are more important to the state than
feminist initiatives. Since womens place issocially constructed through violenceto control
womens sexuality (Johnson, par. 1). It is not surprising that Singapore law courts recently
tried a rash of sexual-molestation cases in which male passengers found it impossible to resist
fondling or otherwise sexually handling stewardesses on SIA flights (Heng 867). Esmeralda,
like the Singapore Girl, illustrate that as capitalism intensifies so has the oppression of women,
who come to be seen as property, producers of goods and reproducers and provides another
justification for categorizing Xicanisma as a third-world feminism.
As a Chicana, Ana Castillos alignment with feminists outside of her country of birth
further strengthens the argument that Xicanisma has weak ties to first-world feminists. Castillo
relates that although born and raised in the United States, I feel more affinity with the feminist
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writings of Egyptian Nawal el Saadawi than white American feministsI find more in common
with post-revolutionary Algerian women than the women who were part of the sexual revolution
of the 1960s in the United States (Castillo, Massacre 69). Although Chicanas reside in the
United States, their struggles towards feminine equality are more synonymous with third-world
feminisms than first-world feminisms. Major differences of ideologies regarding historical,
political, economic, and social roles exist to further the dissension of Xicanisma from first-world
feminism. The characters in So Far from God exhibit these contradictions which are prevalent in
the distinctions between feminisms. Being first and foremost Chicana, Xicanistas must first
battle racism and align with national agendas prior to considering targeted agendas of first-world
feminisms.
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Works Cited
Castillo, Ana. Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma. Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 1994.
Castillo, Ana. So Far from God. New York: Penguin, 1993.
Chicana Feminism. Encyclopedia JROC. 2009. Net Industries. 28 April 2009
<http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6048/Chicana-Feminism.html>.
Delgadillo, Theresa. Forms of Chicana Feminist Resistance: Hybrid Spirituality in Ana
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