for this week's piece I imagined a figure stoic even under the weight of the expectations of who she is meant to be. She reaches for a place beyond the frame, beyond the archetypal woman:
the damned, the wretched, the fallen, the disgraced, the blessed, the pure, the beautiful, the innocent, the seductive, the stubborn, the sacrificial, the nurturing, the devoted, the traitorous...
as we've (very multivocally!) discussed in class, Don Octavio's framing of gender can often be in this mythified and reductive language. The contemporary "woman of México" still is constructed with the legacies of these expectations. Though the lyrics are not penned by Chavela Vargas, when she sings "Cruz de Olvido" they carry these legacies of a woman who suffers, has suffered, will suffer.
"... las heridas son flores, prendas de resurrección, por una parte y, asimismo, reiteración de que la vida es la máscara dolorosa de la muerte" (34).
and alongside these threads, here is a wonderful photography project about female boxers, many of Mexican heritage. How and where do they express these sacrificial tropes?
http://www.delilahmontoya.com/portfolio/Women%20Boxers/content/Terri8bitV5_large.html
No comments:
Post a Comment