Our Mother’s Daughters: The Daughter’s Voice in Chicana/Latina Literature

Attention to family relationships in work by Chicanas and Latinas reveals mothers as paramount figures to a daughter’s identity formation. Mothers may serve as gatekeepers of patriarchy and also as a daughter’s closest female role model—as a result, mother-daughter relationships may also be source of deep ambivalence. The literary and cultural study I undertake in this dissertation examines how Chicanas and Latinas find their voice through asking difficult questions of both their mothers and of the institutions that guide them. The primary texts I examine are foundational to the development of Chicana literature, feminism, and cultural criticism since the 1980’s, and take into account a spectrum of mother/daughter experiences. This work considers how daughters discover their voice through and against their mothers, and how self-expression on the page and on the cultural stage are necessary sites for creation and articulation of a daughter’s agency