The Politics of Labeling
1992; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 19; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1177/0094582x9201900403
ISSN1552-678X
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American Literature Studies
Resumoam what I am. Thus begins Ending Poem, by Aurora Levins-Morales and Rosario Morales (1986: 212-213), a mother-and-daughter statement that reaffirms existence of self and is almost a challenge to those who question existence in United States of a Latina identity and culture. It supports critique by Eliana Ortega and Nancy Saporta-Sternbach (1989: 3) of claim that minority literatures express a search for identity rather than a paradigm of self-affirmation in Latina writer, a self-perception and self-definition. Certainly Morales' Ending Poem would support Ortega and Saporta-Sternbach's (1989:3) view that among U.S. Latina writers, issue is more a question of searching for the expression or articulation of that identity, but not for . . . identity itself. Throughout poem, mother and daughter alternate in their affirmation of their respective identities and use historical, geographical, ancestral, culinary, and other cultural aspects to characterize their (Latina) selves. Still, reading Moraleses' poem, one is struck by ways in which both self (I am what I am) and other (I am not what I am not) are fundamental to construction of identities of these individual Latinas -and, one might say, to ethos of (Latino) group:
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