Representations of Identity in Chicanx Children’s Literature through Word and Image: Maya Gonzalez’s Picturebooks

Abstract

Chicano children’s literature was born in the wake of the so-called El Movimiento, the Chicano Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and especially the 1970s. In the 1990s, as a part of the rising trend of Multiculturalism and as a cultural product and a reflection of power relations, Chicano children’s literature strove to provide an authentic and accurate representation of Chicano identity. The representation of Mexican-Americans in children’s literature until then had been based on cultural homogeneity, historical distortion, and stereotypes, the distinctive elements which are at the core of the construction of the ‘Other’ and that serve to create and maintain structures of power grounded in fixed identities, opposed binaries and inequalities. In Borderlands / La Frontera. The New Mestiza, Chicana author, Gloria Anzaldúa, rethinks the term ‘identity’, or rather ‘consciousness’, from an inclusive, queer perspective which is not based on opposed dualities. The ideas the author develops in her work on the Mestiza identity echo in her books for children Friends from the Other Side / Amigos del Otro Lado and Prietita and the Ghost Woman / Prietita y La Llorona. Prietita, “little dark one”, is Anzaldúa’s alter ego in her children’s books, her little child-

self, “tender, open and vulnerable” (Anzaldúa 2000: 63), who signals her mestizo identity: Mexican American and Indian. Anzaldúa’s second bilingual picturebook, Prietita and the Ghost Woman / Prietita y la Llorona, is illustrated by Maya Gonzalez, who portrays Prietita as a young girl of distinctively Mexican features (dark skin and long black hair). As author and illustrator of her bilingual picture books, contemporary Chicana author Maya Gonzalez gives voice and celebrates the self through what she calls ‘the power of reflection’, moving beyond ‘authentic’ or ‘accurate’ representations of Chicano identity. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse Gonzalez’s picturebooks, starting by focusing on the Nature Trilogy, in which the author highlights our connection to nature (My Colors, My World / Mis colores, mi mundo, I Know the River Loves Me / Yo sé que el río me ama, and Call Me Tree / Llámame árbol), to later explore her most recent projects published by her own independent press, among them The Gender Wheel, “a nature-based, inclusive, body positive story of gender”. I also pay attention to the visual poetry she has created together with Chicano poet Francisco X. Alarcón in a series of picturebooks published between 1997 and 2017. The research questions I address in my study are the following:

1. How has the representation of Chicanx identity in children’s literature reflected ethnic and class power relations throughout Mexican-American history? 2. What elements does Maya Gonzalez make use of visually and verbally for her projects to subvert power relations in terms of aetonormativity, ethnicity and gender? 3. How is contemporary Chicanx children’s literature being received within the

United States context?

4. How are educational programs in the US context integrating these picturebooks, if they are doing so? 5. How are Maya Gonzalez’s presentations at seminars and workshops helping bring about social change in Chicanx and non-Chicanx children’s identities?

In order to analyse the way(s) in which words and images interact, my focus will be on the dual code, visual and verbal, which is characteristic of picturebooks. I examine the elements Gonzalez makes use of, both as an illustrator and as a writer, to give voice and to represent identity, and how her projects create spaces of inclusiveness and agency,

celebrate diversity, and become a source of reflection for all children, Chicanx and non- Chicanx. I frame my study within a critical multicultural approach in order to explore the subversion of power relations in terms of aetonormativity, ethnicity and gender when representing identities in picturebooks for young readers. A critical multicultural analysis of children’s literature (Botelho and Kabakow 2009) allows me to focus on the ideology and power relations at work in children’s literature, so as to bear a critical perspective on Multiculturalism. Although it is not the main purpose of this work, I include two fieldwork studies on the reception of contemporary picturebooks authored by Chicanx authors in order to explore the reception of these works in the US context, both in the publishing industry, and in the educational field, as well as in order to complement the analysis of the representations of Chicanx identity through word and image.

En el capítulo dedicado a los niños latinos y la educación pública en Estados Unidos en Celebrating Cuentos de Naidoo, Ream y Vazquez reflexionan en torno a la noción de “testimonio crítico” y la literatura como medio “(1) para estimular la resistencia entre los jóvenes hispanos a los estragos causados por el trauma que perpetúan su sentido de la ‘otredad’, y (2) para traducir las ofensas del pasado en posibilidades del presente” (13).

¿Cómo puede la literatura estimular la resistencia entre los jóvenes latinos para traducir las ofensas del pasado en posibilidades del presente? Mediante la creación de espacios narrativos “impulsados por la empatía y el entendimiento, en lugar de por presunciones derivadas de los estereotipos, el miedo y la ignorancia” (14). Esto es lo que Anzaldúa hace para proporcionar a los niños chicanos una representación de su cultura y de su identidad en sus dos libros infantiles. En la década de los sesenta, mientras trabajaba como profesora de primaria, la autora chicana se dio cuenta de que los niños migrantes y bilingües necesitaban ver su cultura en los libros que leían. Tal y como exploré en el marco teórico de este studio (sección 2.1.3), en Borderlands / La Frontera. The New

Mestiza (1987) Anzaldúa repiensa el término ‘identidad’ desde una perspectiva inclusiva que no se basa en dualidades. Para la autora chicana, la conciencia de la nueva mestiza debe trascender la mezcla de razas (raza) para convertirse en una ‘intersección’. De la misma manera, la frontera no se refiere únicamente a la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos, sino más bien a una frontera metafórica e indeterminada, entendida aquí como un ‘Tercer Espacio’, un lugar de contacto, de fusión, un puente que pone en contacto a las diferencias. Se considera que la nueva mestiza sirve como mediadora, como un puente que une personas de diferentes colores, clases, razas y periodos de tiempo, que enseña a los ‘recién llegados’, a las futuras generaciones, de forma que sus cambios internos devienen cambios en la sociedad. Las ideas que la autora desarrolla en Borderlands / La Frontera tienen eco en sus libros para niños Friends from the Other Side / Amigos del Otro Lado (1993)1 y Prietita and the Ghost Woman / Prietita y la Llorona (1995). Tras años sufriendo los efectos de la colonización en su propio país, para Anzaldúa era esencial representar la identidad chicana de manera positiva y así, transformar el mundo construido por el colonialismo