SOURCE: DelRosso, Jeana. “The Convent as Colonist: Catholicism in the Works of Contemporary Women Writers of the Americas.” MELUS 26, no. 3 (fall 2001): 183-201.

In the following essay, DelRosso examines the intersections of gender and Catholicism with the discourses of nationhood and colonialism in several narratives of Catholic girlhood. DelRosso discusses the impact of education in a convent school in China on the immigrant experience of the character Theresa in Jen's Typical American.

Writing about the complex relationship between Christian religions and third-world countries in Women and Christianity: A Map of the New Country, Sara Maitland argues that Christianity has frequently been a special vehicle of oppression, but it has also, as in South America, proved a dynamic inspiration for change (16). Maitland's observation speaks to the perspective of many contemporary women writers regarding the role of Catholicism in colonized nations. Writers such as Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, and Rigoberta Mench...