SOURCE: "Teatro Chicano and the Seduction of Nostalgia," in Melus, Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring 1998, pp. 99-115.

In the following essay, Wiley discusses how the notion of nostalgia relates to Moraga's and other Chicano artists drama.

In Cherríe Moraga's first published play, Giving Up the Ghost, the character Amalia leaves her home in Los Angeles to visit Mexico in an attempt to renew her physical and spiritual energy. She muses:

In thought … maybe it was the American influence that causes the blood to be sucked dry from you so early. Nothing was wrong with me, really. My bones ached. I needed rest. Nothing Mexico couldn't cure. (24)

She imagines Mexico, a short bus ride away, as a space of regeneration and identification that does not exist for her north of the border. Her effort as a Mexican-born, dark-skinned woman artist to succeed in a culture that neither values nor understands...