Between Güeras and Carnales: Chicana Feminist Writers and their Search for a Room of their Own.

Abstract

In this paper I will analyse a number of literary texts that reflect the way in which Chicana feminist writers have responded to their problematic relationship with both the Chicano community and the white women’s movement. In particular, I will focus on a number of texts written during the years of the Chicano Movement (from the 1960s to the mid-1970s). These texts tend to argue either for a transformation of Chicanismo that implies the acceptance of Chicanas’ rights or for the breaking-off of relationships with white women’s movements unless they renounce their racism. In the concluding section, I will refer to the texts written in the Post-Movement years (from the mid1970s onwards) and to the strategies used in them to portray Chicana feminists’ identity problems in more recent decades.