The Politics of Faith in the Work of Lorna Dee Cervantes, Ana Castillo, and Sandra Cisneros

If Chicanas are perceived as a communal threat because they are closer to the carnal, according to the Church, they paradoxically are worshipped as the female divine within indigenous practices like Yoruba or Mexica as well. In the works of Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, and Lorna Dee Cervantes women\u27s religious commitment is revealed through their possible responses to cultural multiplicity: 1) the rejection of one tradition over another, 2) syncretism, or 3) the continual migration between practices despite contradictory impulses. Using irony to address the tension and seeming impossibility of maintaining distinct traditions simultaneously, these writers intimate how women derive strength and a stronger sense of self primarily by moving between traditions

Getting into the Game: The Trickster in American Ethnic Fiction

Trickster novels, especially those by Gerald Vizenor and Maxine Hong Kingston, can be used to destabilize and undermine ethnic stereotypes. As many studies show, the trickster him/herself cannot be stable and thus resists the limitations of definition as the embodiment of ambiguity. Both insider and outsider, s/he plays with the whole concept of sides so as to erase the distinction between them. The trickster plays the game, including the game of language, in order to break and exploit its rules and thus destabilizes linguistic markers. Kingston and Vizenor use their novels to subvert the rules of the linguistic game and free perception from stereotypic rigidity. Perceptions of race and ethnicity are frequently codified in the form of stereotypes with which we are all familiar. Once established, they, of course, prove remarkably difficult to dismantle however false or misleading they might be with regard to the race or ethnicity in question; and thus they continue to exacerbate the social tensions with which we are equally familiar. Ethnic American literature has frequently addressed this issue; in this essay I intend to look at one narrative strategy which is specifically designed to question, challenge, exploit, and even manipulate perception