"Tortillerismo": Work by Chicana Lesbians
Author(s): Alicia Gaspar de Alba
Source: Signs, Vol. 18, No. 4, Theorizing Lesbian Experience (Summer, 1993), pp. 956-963
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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REVIEW ESSAYS
Tortillerismo: Work
by Chicana Lesbians
Alicia Gaspar de Alba
Tortilleras, we are called,
Makers, bakers,
Slow lovers of women.
[GASPAR DE ALBA 1989]
P E O P L E O F C O L O R are not immune to colonizing and/or
marginalizing their own kind, as Chicana literary critic Tey
Diana Rebolledo suggests in her essay "The Politics of Poetics:
Or, What Am I, a Critic, Doing in This Text, Anyway?" Says
Rebolledo: "Perhaps more dangerous than ignoring texts we [critics]
dislike is excluding the works of authors whose perspective we do not
share or whose perspective we might feel uncomfortable with. Here I
mean specifically the perspective of sexual preference" (1988, 135). In
fact, this exclusion by Chicana and Chicano critics explains in part why
Chicana lesbian writers are triply marginalized in the literary world.
Scholarship on Chicana lesbianism is relatively new, a first-generation
scholarship in both the Euro-American family of feminist criticism and
the mestizo family of Chicano/a critics. That Chicana/o critics choose to
exclude the work of Chicana lesbians from their analytical speculations
promotes the invisibility of lesbian literature and exercises the heterosex-
ual privilege of those critics who disregard texts that make them "un-
comfortable."
In "Masquerades: Viewing Chicana/o Critics through the New Chi-
cana Lesbian Anthologies," Chicana historian Deena Gonzalez argues
directly that Chicana lesbian writers and Chicano gay authors are colo-
nized by our own critics: "Without some of our work in print, we face
total erasure, no possibility for any presence in historical or cultural
memory. With work in print, but in the hands of the dis-identified, dis-
[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1993, vol. 18, no. 4]
? 1993 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/93/1804-0014$01.00
956 SIGNS Summer 1993
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WORK BY CHICANA LESBIANS de Alba
embodied Het[erosexual] critics, we stand to be-as
malestream documents across the ages-configured to
of domination, to be iconographed now as the thorn
'minoritized' voice without any presence necessary. T
words, they think they 'hear' our voices, our languag
absent" (1991, 73). One of the new anthologies that G
and the first exclusively dedicated to the work of tor
Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us
Carla Trujillo and published by Third Woman Press
the first such anthology, Trujillo's collection is not a
suspended in a literary void. The lesbian literary tra
network of webs that extends, in the Western wor
Sappho; Latina lesbians can trace their histories throu
pean but also African, Native American, and Asian w
is a brief overview of the major texts published in the U
can be said to have prepared the way for Trujillo's C
(1991c).1
With the publication of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by
Radical Women of Color (1981)-an anthology edited by Cherrie Mor-
aga and Gloria Anzalduia (the two most well-known Chicana lesbian
writers to date) and published originally by a white women's press in
Watertown, Massachusetts-mujeres de color in the United States began
to hear the voices of Third World feminist politics in action (e.g., speak-
ing out, forming alliances) and reaction (e.g., to the totalizing effects of
the "women's movement"). Bridge was followed by Moraga's autobio-
graphical Loving in the War Years: Lo que nunca paso por sus labios
(1983), which blends confessional poetry, testimonial essay, and short
fiction, switches codes, and deconstructs the contradictions inherent in a
half-white Chicana lesbian identity. Moraga also takes issue with the
dichotomy between racial allegiance and sexual identification. The view
of the Chicana lesbian as a type of Malinche figure2 is discussed at length
in the essay "A Long Line of Vendidas." The Chicana lesbian, writes
Moraga, "by taking control of her own sexual destiny is purported to be
a 'traitor to her race' by contributing to the 'genocide' of her people-
whether or not she has children.... Like the Malinche of Mexican
1 First, however, a clarification is in order. Like the Latina, African-American, Native
American, and Asian-American authors who appear in the literature, the Chicana con-
tributors call themselves women of color. As these texts specifically address and repre-
sent women of color, it is important to understand that a "woman of color" identity
implies a political position of resistance and opposition to the hegemonic race, class, and
gender constructs of both white patriarchy and white feminism.
2 Malintzin Tenepal, more popularly known as la Malinche, was the name of the
Mayan slave who translated for Hernan Cortez; she is seen by the male interpreters of
Mexican history as a traitor and a sellout to the conquering race. Blamed for the down-
fall of the Aztec empire, la Malinche is the Mexican version of the Eve tale.
Summer 1993 SIGNS 957
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de Alba WORK BY CHICANA LESBIANS
history, she is corrupted by foreign influences which
her people" (1983, 113). In her two-act play Giv
(1986), Moraga personifies the butch and femme d
white feminists, particularly those whose understa
is circumscribed solely by the gender issue, confus
politics.
The year 1987 brought the publication of the anthology Companeras:
Latina Lesbians, edited by Juanita Ramos, and Gloria Anzalduia's Bor-
derlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. The first of these, Companeras,
included work by lesbians from a number of Latino cultures and was the
immediate inspiration for the Trujillo anthology. Following Moraga's
Loving in the War Years as the second Chicana lesbian autobiography,
Anzaldiia's Borderlands traces the history of what she calls "mestiza
consciousness," a politicized racial, historical, and sexual awareness. This
awareness begins, both literally and metaphorically, in the geographical
borderlands of the U.S.-Mexico frontera and extends into the multilin-
gual, tricultural borderlands of Chicano/Mexicano culture. Mestiza con-
sciousness synthesizes in the psychological borderlands, that ambiguous,
contradictory terrain of the mestiza-a terrain that includes, for Anzal-
dua, the borders of Chicana, tejana, fronteriza, lesbiana de color. Making
"the choice to be queer," as Anzaldua puts it, is an empowering act, an
act of self-definition and rebellion that makes it difficult for the Chicana
lesbian to go home but that also leads to a path of knowledge-one
of knowing (and of learning) "the history of oppression of our raza"
(1987, 19).
The annual publication Third Woman published a special issue on
"The Sexuality of Latinas" in 1989, including poetry, prose, and review
essays chronicling sexual/political perspectives of Chicanas and other
Third World women, lesbians among them (Alarc6n, Castillo, and Mor-
aga 1989). In 1990, Anzaldia's anthology Making Face, Making Soul-
Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color
offered an exhaustive collection of personal and critical essays, poetry,
and fiction that documents the multiple processes by which mujeres de
color-across disciplines, occupations, and orientations; across cultural,
physical, and spiritual borders-make their faces, that is, construct their
identities within a racist, sexist, heterosexist, capitalist society. Making
face involves, in part, unmasking one's subjectivity as well as "interfac-
ing" experiences, strategies, and theories that strengthen and support
women of color in the United States.
Although all of these works proved and encouraged interest in the
writings of Latina lesbians, Trujillo says in her introduction that what led
her to compile her Chicana Lesbians anthology was reading Ramos's
Companeras: Latina Lesbians, and realizing that, because of the im-
958 SIGNS Summer 1993
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WORK BY CHICANA LESBIANS de Alba
mense diversity of such lives, the Ramos collection
resent the experience of any one group among the
the idea to focus on her own group and to solicit
Chicana lesbians exclusively. Says Trujillo: "As
wanted to see more about the intricacies and specif
our culture, our family, mixed-race relationships
gether, this issue expresses the vitality of our existen
the perseverance of our struggles. It examines issues t
talk about,' yet need to be discussed so that we may d
process of our own self-definition and discovery"
Homophobia, self-definition, rejection from fam
the gender codes of the race are some of the difficul
pieces in the first section of Chicana Lesbians, title
to "the life" of many Chicana lesbians is the butche
of sexual identity as well as health issues such as
Ofrenda," the opening piece of the anthology, Che
against the medical implication of the claim that
breast-feed run a greater risk of developing breas
what's this shit? Women don't use their breasts li
and their breasts betray them? Is this the lesbian
brothers, cancer for us?" (1991, 9).
The second section of the anthology, "The Desir
Trujillo calls "passion in its totality," including bod
excerpt from the Ana Castillo poem "What Only
Once
discovered
what only lovers
knew:
the slow rhythm
of your steady
breath
dark red nipples
standing erect
the black hair
on your legs
Once the moon fell
on you
the stifling air
cooled against you
the whole room was
eden
Summer 1993 SIGNS 959
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de Alba WORK BY CHICANA LESBIANS
taking a taste
of you ...
and I wanted
to taste you
just once.
[1991, 60-61]
The desire for solidarity and communication is another kind of passion;
so is the desire engendered by the merging of erotic and academic dis-
courses, as in E. D. Hernandez's "Love Poem 1989":
When I say things like-"I would like to deconstruct your prose
and perhaps do other nifty, radical, abstract things"-
it does something.
I assertively apply my feminist theories upon you.
... "peel those black panties off."
[1991, 67]
"The Color" section, though too briefly developed in a text that is
meant to represent women of color, investigates the impact of skin color
on Chicana lesbian relationships and identity. Skin color denotes race,
class, and language conflicts, and, because Chicana lesbianism is not only
a sexual but also a political and spiritual identity, those conflicts that are
denoted by skin color must be acknowledged and written about in the
ongoing process of identification. Martha Barrera in "Cafe con Leche"
celebrates her mixed-raced relationship with a white woman: "It's not
brown on the outside and white on the inside like a coconut, but rather
integrated and warm, and sweet and strong, like cafe con leche" (1991,
83). Barrera's position is a controversial one within Third World lesbian
politics, what some Third World feminists would call colonizer/colonized
relationships. Terri de la Pefia's "Beyond El Camino Real" is a counter-
point to Barrera's stance and reveals the internal conflicts of a "caf6-con-
leche" relationship. On a cross-country trip, the Chicana protagonist of
de la Pefia's story realizes how out of place she is both geographically and
emotionally the further she and her Anglo lover move away from Cali-
fornia. "She recalled their precious intimacy, Jozie's soft breasts against
her face, her pink nipples budding at the touch of Monica's lips. They
had connected at once as women; why had their cultural conflicts been
insurmountable?" (1991, 90). This section is strong on prose, but only
includes three poems that deal with color-coordinated problems within
Chicana lesbian lives. The most resonant of these is Juanita M. Sanchez's
"voz en una carcel," about the language border that can divide mixed-
race couples:
960 SIGNS Summer 1993
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WORK BY CHICANA LESBIANS de Alba
my voice is in the prison
of my own history
i never know
am i being too spanish
or not enough english?
you laughed at my accent
maybe,
maybe just one too many times.
[1991, 79]
Nearly half of the book is taken up by the final section, "The Strug-
gle." Including a thirty-page interview with Ana Castillo, four critical
essays, and a series of poems, this section analyzes different sites of
struggle in the Chicana lesbian community. A primary site is lesbian
invisibility, the fact that nothing in Chicano culture nor in the dominating
Anglo culture validates or even acknowledges lesbian existence. Apart
from invisibility, major problematics that confront Chicana lesbians in-
clude religion, familia, and loyalty to the race. "Chicana lesbians pose a
threat to the Chicano community," says Trujillo in her own contribution
to this section, "primarily because they threaten the established social
hierarchy of patriarchal control" (1991a, 191). Because she rejects the
traditional roles ascribed to women in patriarchal Chicano/Mexicano
culture-mother, wife, virgin, whore-and so fails to participate in prop-
agating the race or servicing the macho, the Chicana lesbian is labeled a
vendida, or sellout. Hence, the Chicana lesbian is marginalized both
outside of and within her own culture. Another site of struggle is identity,
particularly the claiming and naming of oneself as a lesbian, as seen in the
interview with Castillo. Academia, which caters either to the white male
or to the white feminist perspective, thereby excluding women (especially
lesbians) of color, is yet another point of struggle. Also, there is the
struggle for literal survival as women in a patriarchal society and as a
culture with a silenced history and an alienated language.
Of the four critical essays, Emma Perez's "Sexuality and Discourse:
Notes from a Chicana Survivor" is the one that most keenly addresses the
condition of that history and that language. Treading the ledge between
theoretical discourse and personal experience with the grace of a trapeze
artist, P6rez reclaims Chicanas' "sitio y lengua," the site and tongue with
which to tell the story of our oppression by the invading Europeans and
the gringos/gringas, as well as the story of our anger. Perez warns white
feminists to respect the "racial memory" of women of color: "You're
white. You will never know how it feels to have brown skin and a
Summer 1993 SIGNS 961
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de Alba WORK BY CHICANA LESBIANS
Mexican name.... We cannot be friends as long as y
every part of who I am, as long as you think you c
and silence my language, my thoughts, my words, m
To read the anger of women/lesbians of color as
polite is a colonizing strategy, similar to the percep
traitor, as belonging to/betraying one side or the othe
the Chicana lesbian writer "belongs" to the New W
studies; on the other hand, she "betrays" the Old Worl
cultural memory. The binary choices allotted to Ma
Even though Malinche was not a lesbian (as far as we
lesbian is a Malinchista. As Chicana, she must interpret
three cultures that spawned her, a spawning born o
tion, and anger. As lesbiana, she is always engaged
self-creation. Out of corn, water, and lime the torti
of her identity.
Department of American St
University of New Mexi
References
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of Latinas," special issue of Third Woman, vol. 4.
Anzaldua, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Fran-
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Anzalduia, Gloria, ed. 1990. Making Face, Making Soul-Haciendo Caras: Cre-
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Barrera, Martha. 1991. "Cafe con Leche." In Trujillo 1991c, 80-83.
Castillo, Ana. 1991. "What Only Lovers." In Trujillo 1991c, 60-61.
de la Pefia, Terri. 1991. "Beyond El Camino Real." In Trujillo 1991c, 85-94.
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962 SIGNS Summer 1993
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WORK BY CHICANA LESBIANS de Alba
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Summer 1993 SIGNS 963
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