SOURCE: Kafka, Phillipa. “Re-Shaping Religious and Cultural Mythologies.” In (Out)Classed Women: Contemporary Chicana Writers on Inequitable Gendered Power Relations, pp. 81-98. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Kafka traces the revisionist treatment of such female mythical figures as Malinche, La Llorona, and the Virgen de Guadalupe in works by Sandra Cisneros, Margarita Cota-Cárdenas, and other Chicana writers.

One of the earliest responses to “the monolithic androcentrism” (Pratt 1993, 863) of the La Raza movement was the manifesto Chicanas Speak Out. Chicanas called for the destruction of religious and cultural myths that constrain female sexuality. They also maintained that marriage has to be transformed, as well as the Catholic Church, or it should stand aside. Even so, La Raza paid no attention, never including this Chicana manifesto into the archives of the Chicano history of the La Raza movement (Pratt 1993, 861). Nevertheless, in Chicana feminist annals this historic...