novelist, poet, essayist, short story writer
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The Mexic Amerindian woman has inherited the sexism instituted by dominant Mexican and U.S. society compounded by the sexism within certain oppressed indigenous cultures. In neither the creative literature nor the ethnographic documentation, did I hear her speak for herself. Only in 1992, the quincentenary of European conquest, was the world delivered the voice of one Mesoamerican woman, the Mayan Rigoberta Menchu who received the Nobel Peace Prize for her ongoing activism on behalf of her people's human rights.
… In terms of Latino communities generally speaking, I don’t think women’s (and gay) sexual identities are more than simply tolerated outside the heterosexual one. But I do believe there is change taking place there, too. These are my observations and most definitely have no empirical basis. I do believe that straight men, regardless of age or background, because times are changing, are becoming more accepting of the variations of binary gender constricts.
(In one of your essays in the book, from 2012, you write about Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez and say they are "[d]oing no more than supporting and promoting patriarchal and capitalist goals." Do you still feel this way about them, even as they—Beyoncé especially—are often held up as feminist icons?) AC: I do, but I know that I would have a lot of women of color of younger generations argue with me about that. I come from a generation of radical feminism; we believed in not using your body for financial gain and that sexualization fed into violence against women. I know that dates me. The performances that both Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé give are highly sexually charged, and they've made a lot of money off of a lot of men by sexualizing themselves as exotic beauties. Both of them have dyed their hair blonde, straightened it, weaved it, which feeds into a fantasy about women and women of color. I come from a very different perspective, and I don't believe that anything in terms of personal gain or materialism is really helping the rest of the world. If you make that much money, instead of buying a humongous mansion, go back to your community and start community projects and talk to your legislators about changing some of the laws [that mean] young men of color who have felonies because [they dealt] drugs as teenagers can no longer integrate into society. Moving away from Beyoncé and J-Lo—I'm sure they do a lot of good deeds—I'm very lucky I have a roof over my head. I can eat healthy food, my children have coats in cold weather, they have an education. I don't think a human being needs much more beyond that.
After extricating our imaginations from the tight reigns of patriarchal imperialism, our next step is to bring others into the fold. Quite the contrary to our so-called assimilation as "Hispanics," I firmly believe, along with many women of conscientización in the Americas, that U.S. society must eventually acculturate our mestiza vision. Our collective memories and present analyses along these lines hold the antidote to that profound sense of alienation many experience in white dominant society.
As disturbing as some of us may find it there seems to be some evidence that the age men are most attracted to is a young teen, 13 to be specific. Women especially are subjected to ageism. Once she is past her twenties, I think a lot of women, let’s say in contemporary Western culture, still fear losing their sexual appeal, i.e., their worth as women…
It has been said of me and of my writing that I am in search of identity, as indeed we all are, which is a fact of living in a world of fragmented selves. White men (and white women) have always attempted this through their writing; and because they are members of dominant society, their search was considered representative of all, therefore, universal. On the other hand, the search by those of us who come from marginalized cultures in the United States is categorized as a sociological dilemma or a schizophrenic self-perception.