This dissertation examines the cultural accomplishments of Mexican American women in 20th century Texas, looking at how women in the arts paved the way for a new Mexican American hybrid identity. I examine how Mexican American women in the borderlands, as Gloria Anzaldúa so aptly put it, “became the crossroads” in their bodies, minds and spirits. By examining the lives and work of the four women, Jovita González, Rosita Fernández, Alicia Dickerson Montemayor, and Consuelo “Chelo” González Amezcua, I have demonstrated that Mexican American women broke boundaries of their own culture and of Anglo Texas culture in order to create their art. In the process of becoming American, they flouted the conventional gender roles and paved the way for a generation of Chicana artists, musicians, and authors. My research was conducted in archives throughout Texas, by examining and analyzing letters, manuscripts, newspapers, recordings, films, TV and video clips, magazines, and art work.
As artists of the borderlands, the women I researched participated in laying the groundwork for a hybrid Mexican American identity, developing Mexican American art that paved the way for the development of a distinctive Mexican American culture by the hybridization and use of common Mexican forms and references in their art, through which they reinforced and redefined Mexican American culture while telling stories that had not been told before
