BREAKING THE SILENCE IN ALBA AMBERT’S PORQUE HAY SILENCIO: ONE WOMAN’S JOURNEY
Joan F. Marx
Muhlenberg College
In Alba Ambert’s first novel, Porque hay silencio (1987), silence is both literal and symbolic. Blanca, Ambert’s main character, travels from childhood into adulthood as the narrative elements of theme, language and imagery portray a world rife with marginalization in which she is isolated, powerless, and thus voiceless. From Blanca’s earliest memories in Santurce, Puerto Rico, to her most recent stay in an insane asylum inCambridge, Massachusetts; she struggles to endure a life in which she is continually silenced. Her efforts to establish her own identity within her family and within the world at large is set against the backdrop of an impoverished childhood in the Bronx and a cruel married life in Puerto Rico. Even her scholarship to HarvardUniversity results in a cultural crisis that she suffers as a Latina in Massachusetts. This exploration of a woman’s journey to achieve empowerment amidst poverty, machismo and bigotry results eventually in a spiritual awakening that brings with it a fervent desire to change her destiny. She finds her voice, vowing to be silent no longer.
Male and female characters serve as models of machismo and marianismo as they determine the limits of Blanca’s marginalized life. In Puerto Rico, she is the silent victim of a culture in which women of her socioeconomic class have few options in life. In the United States, she is just as oppressed by patriarchy although here it is cultural patriarchy in which her ethnicity becomes an alienating factor within the predominantly White neighborhood of Boston where she settles. Her silence throughout her life becomes a metaphor for a lack of power that negates her very existence. Yolando Quiñones Mayo and Rosa Perla Resnick in “The Impact of Machismo on Hispanic Women” provide clear definitions for both marianismo and machismo. According to them, marianismo “connotes passivity and submissiveness and the acceptance of a virginal model for women,” thus leading to “dominance and submission” (3). Indeed, in Porque hay silencio, it is Blanca who symbolizes this passivity. Even her name, Blanca or “White” reflects the lack of identity since white is defined as the absence of color. Her systematic marginalization has silenced her into a state of virtual nonexistence. She only exists for those around her as an object to serve their needs. This is a tragic journey that begins at birth. Conversely, Mayo and Resnick assert that machismo in its most negative sense has “come to describe men who are aggressive, physically strong, emotionally insensitive, and often womanizers” (3), which, in the novel, is represented by a series of male characters, beginning with Blanca’s father.
As the daughter of a man who rejected any familial responsibility either to his wife or children, Blanca begins life as a victim. Benjamín, her father, rejects her from the first moment of her existence and continues to do so throughout her life. When she is born, his only comment is to call her a “sapo” or frog, abandoning both her and her mother in favor of a series of relationships with women, described as his “concubinas” that he would choose instead of his family (7). Blanca’s only comfort is her mother, a seamstress who dies young. Her mother’s death is the first of a series of experiences that would limit Blanca’s sense of empowerment. From this moment, she becomes identified as “la huérfana” and is likened to a “ratoncito asustao que cada vez que viene visita se esconde en los rincones como cucaracha cuando se prende la luz” (27). This abandonment would become the hallmark of her earliest years, eventually causing damage to both flesh and mind. During one of her father’s rare visits when Blanca accidentally urinates on him, he refers to her as a “puerca,” declaring “la huérfana ésa del demonio” to be both “inservible e insufrible” (33). Seemingly causing a rupture in their already fragile relationship, the incident is not the sole cause of Benjamín’s rejection of his daughter for the narrator hastens to add that “(él) ya no necesitaba excusas para ignorar a la hija “(34). Thus, he makes clear very early the role that Blanca, like any woman, has or should have in regard to men. If she cannot be controlled, he wants no part of her.
Eventually, Blanca becomes the charge of an abusive grandmother, Bernarda. Referred to as the “némesis” of the entire family, her father’s mother, while formidable, is also a victim of her cultural environment (18). Within her family, she demands “dominio absoluto (27)” and “obediencia absoluta” (56). Bernarda’s brutality, both verbal and physical, for all of her young granddaughter’s transgressions, real and imagined, represents a foreshadowing of a victimization by Latino males that would last through Blanca’s entry into adulthood. It is indeed a silent journey as we see: “Así la niña se encerró en su silencio, escondiéndose en un dormitorio oscuro cuando aparecía visita porque la gente le causaba un pavor calcinante. Creció sola como hoja imponiéndose con violencia entre las grietas de una piedra, sus pensamientos rebeldes negándose a callar en su silencio”(31-2). One potent example occurs when Blanca is unable to keep from urinating in bed. Bernarda punishes her in a way that silences any defense by dehumanizing her, calling her a “Mueble inútil” (47), and by threatening more beatings if she dares to cry. She, like Blanca’s father and like all the men that would abuse her later in life, expects her granddaughter to serve her and to fulfill all of her needs. Once she says to her: “Tú única amiga soy yo,” chilling words which would some day be repeated by Blanca’s controlling husband (90).
In the article,”On Language, Writing and Exile: An Interview with Alba Ambert” by Carmen Dolores Hernández, the author discusses the grandmother as a “.character somehwere in between your usual saint or whore characters that are so prevalent” in Puerto Rican literature: “There are indications of the difficult life she had which caused her to become self-centered and cruel, but this simply explains her behavior; it doesn’t justify it” (59). Her brutality can be interpreted then as a rejection of or rebellion against the traditional cultural role ascribed to her since she is as controlling in many of the same ways as the men will control Blanca later on in the novel.
Accordingly, the events of Blanca’s life unfold in a repeated series of abandonment that have an indelible effect on her psyche. It is important to note the connection between machismo, poverty, and cultural influences as they affect Blanca not only in Puerto Rico but also in the United States. Spending her youth in the United States, Blanca does not escape machismo, but rather becomes even more its victim in a world that seems to intensify its detrimental effects. The narrator describes the South Bronx as the catalyst for even more repressive treatment by Latino men for its economic and cultural marginalization:
Desolación, Enajenación. Hambre. Apatía. Ira. Una mechaempapada de combustible lista para arder. .La calle ofreceun solaz manchado de ron, heroína, tabaco, navajas afiladas. (16)
El hombre es macho en esta selva de concreto sucio. Es un macho avasallado, castrado, sus bolas aplastadas por la bota de la opresión. El hombre es macho, pero ya no caza. El hombre es macho, pero ya no manda. El hombre es macho, pero aún el trabajo se le niega. Aquí, en las calles mugrientas, pestilentes del Sur del Bronx, el hombre es sólo un “spik.” (17)
In this way, ever the “huérfana,” Blanca describes herself as a “saco vacío” after being dropped off by her father to live with the family of his friend Rafael (64). Rafael abuses her sexually, saying one-day “Tú eres mi novia ahora. Vamos a jugar mucho tú y yo solitos” (64). For Rafael’s wife, who already has six children, she is simply “otra molestia,” one more mouth to feed and thus Blanca remains silent about her own needs, living isolated as much as possible from the family (55).
The repeated beatings and emotional abuse by her grandmother, her continual abandonment by her father, and the sexual abuse by her father’s friend Rafael while living in the Bronx provide no models of a healthy mental outlook for the impressionable Blanca. Ignored, objectified, rejected, and tormented, she is controlled by everyone and loved by no one.
Esa niña lastimada, perra en el rincón, sin habla, sinpeso, sin forma, como el aire, castigada a un silencio total que gritaba desde su barriga, intentando prorrumpir como oleaje, rompiendo todo dique, en un grito prolongado que traspase el trueno, que invada la agonía, que la ahogue en vientos. Esa niña que en su rincón de perra intentaba devorarse a sí misma, alimentándose de su propia carne, consumiendo trozos de labios, de lengua, de mejillas internas. Se pegaba, se mordía. Quería consumirse para dejar de existir. (80)
She is the classic victim, used and abused by all those around her in a type of cultural void that aggravates the already harmful effects of machismo.
Once back in Puerto Rico, Blanca fares no better with the man who is to become her husband. He is the stereotypical abuser of women, which the reader learns from her first encounter with him. A driving instructor, he savagely rapes the very young Blanca during her first lesson. His violence against the naive and defenseless protagonist is unrelenting in its attempt to humiliate and victimize her for his own satisfaction. Even here, her silence speaks to the power and oppression of machismo. His brutality, like the brutality she has already suffered all throughout her life, silences her “ante el temor de otro ataque” (109). Unconcerned that she may have been a virgin, he snaps at her after finishing: “–No te hagas la changa, coño–gritaba el hombre–. No me vengas con desmayitos ahora. Mira que mi mujer me está esperando. Párate, carajo” (110). Even her reaction at this point reflects the passivity of the abused woman: “Blanca creyó estar enamorada de este hombre de ojos amarillos…” (111)
It is also important to note that Ambert never gives this man an identity other than the man with the yellow eyes. Descriptions of “El hombre (123)” during the rape scene as “la bestia que encima le galopaba” and of the act of raping her as a “puño feral” (109) highlight his animal-like and thus machista nature. Indeed, his treatment of Blanca is often brutal. After she gives birth to their daughter, Taína, he remains only interested in the satisfaction of his own sexual needs, regardless of the fact that she has recently given birth. She also soon becomes the sole support of the family, working at various banks in San Juan. Her husband stops working, focusing his attention on controlling every aspect of her life in order to insure that she will be able to satisfy all of his needs:
Blanca se convirtió en su posesión, su mantenedora, su fuente de placer sexual, su guiñapo para mandar y maltratar. No le permitía un suspiro de privacidad. Todo se lo debía contar, no le permitía tener amigas porque–las amigas solo sirven para sonsacar–. Su único amigo era él. (124)
Marilyn Frye, in the article, “Some Reflections on Separatism and Power,” published as part of a collection of essays in The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory, explores the notion of access within social constructs. In its most basic form, she asserts, power is access and, as such, exploitative systems or societies provide only “asymmetrical access” for those without power. “The slave is unconditionally accessible to the master. Total power is unconditional access; total powerlessness is being unconditionally accessible. The creation and manipulation of powers is constituted of the manipulation and control of access” (103). Moreover, women are powerless to deny male access to them for, as Frye explains, “Male parasitism means that males must have access to women; it is the Patriarchal Imperative” (103). For Blanca, then, she becomes the provider of all that is necessary to sustain her husband and is at once his victim as well as a victim of patriarchy as a sociopolitical system.
Machismo, at its worst, relies on power, thereby qualifying as a social construct in this regard. Mayo and Resnick cite the origin of machismo as a legacy from the Spanish Conquest, which has become systematized in both social and political institutions in Latin America. Its effect is all encompassing: “For these women, the retention of a traditional culture that relegates women to submissive and often inferior roles from birth to death and is supported by the legal, religious, and political systems constitutes continued systemic social oppression (Vasquez & Gil, 1996, 5). Consequently, then, in a letter to a friend, we see Blanca’s despair: “Camino cabizbaja por la vida. No sé caminar de otra manera” (13). By her adulthood, the result is catastrophic: “.Con sus pedazos perdidos, dispersos, Blanca no podía ser humana” (79). She suffers a mental breakdown, oddly enough at the point in which she is living independently at Harvard University while working towards completion of a doctoral degree.
In the novel, however, it is the character of Celia, Blanca’s Puerto Rican friend whose life contexualizes the inequities of power between men and women through her archetypal portrayal of the abused Latina. When her husband Juan commits her to the same madhouse where Blanca is interned, she astutely provides a telling analysis of women’s lack of freedom in male-dominated, Hispanic society:
Celia entendió.-Bueno, tú sabes que la culpabilidad siempre acechará a la mujer, especialmente a la mujer puertorriqueña que debe sufrir, padecer, sacrificarse en la hoguera como una buena mártir por el bien del hombre, sea éste padre, hermano, esposo, hijo o amante. Nosotras somos oprimidas y explotadas no sólo por los gringos que mantienen nuestros destinos en el puño sino por nuestros hombres. Es el acondicionamiento impuesto por el hombre con sus principios hipócritas e idiotas. Doblegadas estamos en la fábrica, en la escuela, en la cocina, en la oficina, en la colonia. La mujer puertorriqueña es una madona, pero una madona sufrida, suplicante, una madona que debe ser virgen y puta a la vez. Una madona que debe permanecer pura para darle excusa al hombre a corretear con otras madonas que hacen cosas que nunca harían las mujeres supuestamente decentes, pero que a la vez el hombre las espera de ella. (72-3)
It is precisely this social institutionalization of machismo that Mayo and Resnick cite as causes of “violence” against Latinas which may be internalized by them with physical and or psychological manifestations (5).
From a cultural perspective, violence against women is perceived as punishment for not behaving or performing as socially expected. When women have internalized the culture’s expectations of them — to be passive and accept unconditionally men’s right to own them and men’s
legal right to discipline them through corporal punishment and emotional violence — they act against themselves and limit development of their expectations. These cultural expectations encourage women to sacrifice their own needs, including their physical health, to comply with cultural
demands that place a priority on fulfilling men’s physical desires and need for ego support. (5)
In Celia’s case, her husband prevents her from fulfilling her dream to study classics at the university her by hospitalizing her as soon as she begins to neglect him and her domestic duties. Celia tells Blanca she married young and to a much older man, erroneously expecting that her marriage would both liberate and empower her. “El matrimonio no es liberación, es una condena más” (73), she states, explaining that it is her “herencia…” (162) To suffer at the hands of men. Although her husband demands total loyalty to him and thus to the domestic world in which she must live, it is a world that offers only “los melodramas televisados y la lucha libre profesional” instead of the “universo de ideas” for which she yearns (73-4). When she realizes that pursuing an education threatens to upset the balance of power in her home and would thereby be denied to her, she rebels, a fatal choice for someone so controlled by an overbearing husband: “Por eso estoy aquí, porque me rebelé, porque me deprimí, porque me negué al coito, porque no mantenía la casa pulcra, porque en lugar de restregar pisos, leía Leviatán” (73-4). Not only is Juan able to deny his wife an opportunity to study but he also continues to control her by making the mental health system as his accomplice.
In this way, Celia’s husband signs the papers to commit her to the asylum, an indictment of the type mentioned by Mayo and Resnick which speaks to the destructive consequences of machismo on relationships between Latino men and women and of how social systems enforce such gender-based marginalization. “Celia, la deprimida, es una feminista malograda, cuyo marido, en la mejor tradición machista, la internó. Recibe tratamiento electroconvulsivo para apagarle le llama libertaria” (69). Her suffering does not end once separated from Juan. Rather, it continues in the hospital where she is tormented by an all-White staff that tries with even more diligence to cure her of her rebellion as if their task were to complete the job begun by her husband at home: “Las drogas, las cargas eléctricas, la regimentación rígida asfixiante, la penetración sútil en los pensamientos más profundas e íntimos. ¿Cómo derrocar esta tiranía?” (67).
This tyranny is indeed representative of what Ofelia Schutte refers to in her article “Cultural Alterity: Cross-Cultural Communication and Feminist Theory in North-South Contexts” as she describes the “culturally different other” whose “invisibility as a producer of culture” is a consequence of Western colonialism (52-3, 59). For Schutte, being a Latina in the United States means one’s role or voice will be limited by the dominant culture (53):
One reason for this is that women in masculine-dominant societies, including Anglo-American society, are viewed primarily as transmitters rather than producers of culture. They are viewed principally as caregivers whose function in culture is to transmit and conserve, not question and create cultural values. (53)
Thus, Celia’s yearning to study at the university is destined to be silenced, not only by her machista husband, but also by White society as large, which is represented by the microcosm of the asylum. No one at the hospital understands that her change in behavior at home from the ideal domestic servant to a devourer of philosophical treatises is anything other than madness as her husband insists, and, so, as the narrator indicates, “.ella hablaba menos y menos cada día.” (70). As Schutte further describes, the “ultimate oppression a human being can experience is to be bereft of any meaningful agency” in which “their options are limited to those that effectively fail to promote their own good” (61). In the novel, once Celia learns that her Juan has hired a girl to live in the house in order to take her place, she decides that her only option is to escape through her own death, which the narrator terms “un acto de autoimolación” (162). It is the final act of an abandoned woman who, states, “…lo he perdido todo, hasta la dignidad…” (160). She commits suicide symbolically in her bed, alone, and, in this way, she is silenced forever.
Blanca, as someone whose own relationships with men embody the worst of machismo and its marginalizing effect on Latinas, is committed to this same asylum for attempted suicide. While pursuing a degree at Harvard University, she finds that living in the United States as a Puerto Rican woman contributes to her lifelong feelings of nothingness and thus to a deep depression: “La confusión la paraliza porque es ella la forastera”(148). Her intellectual work at Harvard offers a potent counterpoint to the cultural void of her life in Boston. Outside of campus, living a struggle since there are few Puerto Ricans in “este mundo de frío y hielo” (142) where they suddenly find themselves to be “minorías” (147).
.eran menos que los blancos. Carecían de blancura, de acento bostoniano, de apellidos irlandeses o protestantes, carecían de honor y dignidad porque nacieron extranjeras. Blanca luchó por mantener su identidad intacta, por no caer en la locura de dejar de ser lo que era. No quería asimilarse en un cuerpo ajeno aunque la invasión cultural la apabulló con voces guturales, gustos foráneos, impregnación inescapable. La invasión la arropó con indumentaria extraña borboteando una peste a muerte. Blanca se sintió presa dentro del mármol y raspó el vestido duro con sus trizas de sangre. (147)
For Blanca, this cultural alienation becomes “…la desintegración total” (149). The parallel between the effect of American culture and machista men on her emotional state seems unequivocal. Just as her controlling father and husband have made her feel nonexistent so too on a cultural level, does living in the United States.
Here, her alienation resembles what Patricia Hill Collins terms the “intersectionality” of “gender, race, class, and nation” in the United States (156). On a cultural level, the “traditional family ideal” of the male as patriarch has become systematized into what she explains as a “naturalized hierarchy” of society (158-9).
The logic of the traditional family idea can be used to explain race relations. One-way that this occurs is when racial inequality becomes explains using family roles. For example, racial ideologies that portray people of color, as intellectually underdeveloped, uncivilized children require parallel ideas that construct Whites as intellectually mature civilized adults. When applied to race, family rhetoric that deems adults more developed than children, and thus entitled to greater power, uses naturalized ideas about age and authority to legitimate racial hierarchy. Providing age and gender hierarchies adds additional complexity. Whereas White men and White women enjoy shared racial privileges provided by Whiteness, women are expected to defer to men. Within this frame of race as family, women of subordinated racial groups defer to men of their groups, often to support men’s struggles in dealing with racism (159).
By extension, the preservation of the power of the racial and thus economic majority means their spatial separation from diverse groups according to Hill Collins:
Assumptions of race and class-segregated space mandate that U.S. families and the neighborhoods where they reside be kept separate. Just as creating a family from individuals where diverse racial, ethnic religious or class backgrounds is discouraged, mixing different races within one neighborhood is frowned upon. As mini nation-states, neighborhoods allegedly operate best when racial and/or class homogeneity prevails. Assigning Whites, Blacks and Latinos their own separate spaces reflects efforts to maintain a geographic, racial purity.This belief in segregated physical spaces also has parallels to ideas about segregated social and symbolic spaces. (162)
Indeed, in the narrative, Blanca finds graffiti painted in red on the walls of her apartment building that warns, “Spiks get out- y -Puerto Rican garbage-” (152). In this way, then, women of color, such as Blanca, within such a restricted, sociopolitical construct would by definition be even more marginalized and thus powerless.
It is her psychiatrist at the asylum, Dr. Hackman, who symbolizes her cultural malaise. As a man and as an Anglo, he is incapable of understanding her particular type of victimization and thus is unable to help cure her depression: “El Dr. Hackman ni siguiera sospechaba la existencia de esta caldera caliginosa…el hombre no entendió” (75). Her self-hatred and feelings of despair are beyond his comprehension. In fact, it is obvious that no one at the asylum is able to identify culturally with her or her friend Celia, as we see when they converse in Spanish, “Trepidando ante la posibilidad de que alguien las escuchara y les ordenara hablar en inglés porque–está en América ahora, –como si Puerto Rico estuviese en Australia…”(157).
According to Mayo and Resnick, the system that supports male dominance, even in the United States, cannot respond appropriately to women who have been victimized by machismo since “They inevitably bear the blame and are punished for their own victimization” (2). In Ambert’s novel, the metaphor of silence represents this victimization as we see all throughout Blanca’s life:
El silencio le chillaba en el cerebro como frenazo de bicicleta en el pavimento. A nadie le importaba su existencia aquí, ni siquiera al psiquiatra soñoliento…Los ojos de los otros la miraban sin reconocerla. Era transparente, o peor aún un mueble. Su abuela la había llamado mueble inútil constantemente, y ahora, en medio de seres que no veían, eso era ella. (157)
The cultural clash obscures any hope for understanding and therefore for the healing of her emotional scars. The implications of this gulf between cultures are particularly complex for Latinas in the United States as Mayo and Resnick contend:
Hispanic American women are caught between the old culture of their countries of origin and the new culture of the United States. Their hesitance to ponder how to bring about changes that would merge the two sociocultural systems often makes them seem complacent, unmotivated and accepting of the status quo. (Mayo & Resnick 5)
Indeed, Blanca is resistant to any attempt to work toward healing and unable to focus on anything but the pain of her despair: “Cada momento Blanca analizaba estrategias de autodestrucción.Blanca sentía su alma magullada, se sentía fea, incompetente, incapaz, tonta.” (75). Much like Celia, her oppression only increases in the asylum where the dominant culture is incapable of the type of “cross-cultural communication” that Ofelia Schutte deems necessary to address issues of self-worth and voice for non-Whites, especially women, within a Western, postcolonial setting (60).
It is only upon the death her friend Celia that Blanca manages to overcome her own desire to die. Through Celia’s suffering at the hands of her cruel husband, Blanca sees that her own salvation would have to be dependent upon a rejection of the cultural codes that have battered her physically and psychologically into submission. Therefore, the night before leaving the asylum, she asserts that she will never return: “No, no volvería jamás. De eso estaba segura. Ya había cumplido su condena por pecados pasados y por venir. Agarrándose a su cordura, como náufrago, sabía lo fácilmente que podrían arrancársela, como a Celia con sus ojos de Olimpia de Manet”(165). Feeling strong for the first time in her life, she tells her daughter not to come for her since she wishes to leave of her own accord: “Llegué humillada, pero quiero salir con dignidad, ostentando la fortaleza que tengo ahora” (163). Indeed, it is the first time that she recognizes her own dignity and worth. As she falls asleep for the last time in her room, she “.soñó con agua tibia, sin nieve, que le limpió la piel lamida de lodo.” (166). Culturally significant, the water that cleans the filth of her victimization is warm like her island home as opposed to the ice of Boston which represents only oppression. For the first time in her life, she is “clean” or cognizant of the social, racial, and economic constructs that have marginalized her. This eventual self-awareness is key, hence the title of the novel, “Porque hay silencio,” which aptly describes the story of why her life to this point has been one marked by silence. Once she is able to walk out of the asylum, her metaphoric silence is broken, ending her journey with a cultural epiphany that empowers her with hope for new models for an enriching life. Throwing off the bonds machismo and marianismo as well as the colonial patriarchy of that determines her life in the United States, she is certain that she will survive and thus she herself becomes a model for social and cultural resistance. As she pushes open the exit door of the hospital, she declares it to be the “.puerta final, la que abriría todas las puertas” (166). The contrast between Blanca’s new consciousness becomes an opportunity to define the importance of breaking the silence for all women.
In summary, Porque hay silencio contributes to the literary dialogue of many women writers from all areas of Latin America who, through their female protagonists symbolize the nature of marginalization within the context of social class, gender, and ethnicity. As Blanca seeks to authenticate the self within a world that is marked by economic disparity and thus, social and cultural oppression, her struggle becomes emblematic of marginalized Latina woman. In the interview by Hernández, the author is asked whether or not the novel is autobiographical. She responds, “.I’ve incorporated not only my own experiences but those of other Puerto Rican women that I know. It is a way of getting many stories out. It’s a kind of bearing witness to the lives of Puerto Rican women” (59). Pointedly weaving contrasts between the inner world of the Blanca’s spirit with the outer world of her despair, Alba Ambert creates a unique character whose journey reflects the harsh reality of daily life for women at the margins of power. In this way, her tale provides a potent subtext that brings into sharp focus the ideology of power in social institutions that support both machismo and cultural patriarchy. Blanca’s eventual empowerment becomes, in essence, part of an exploration of the politics of gender that is representative of the Latina narrative both here and abroad.
References
Ambert, Alba. Porque hay silencio. Houston: University of Texas, Arte Público Press, 1998.
Frye, Marilyn. “Some Reflections on Separatism and Power,” The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. Trumansburg, N.Y.: The Crossing Press, 1983.
Hernández, Carmen Dolores. “On Language, Writing and Exile: An Interview with Alba Ambert,” MultiCultural Review, Review 6, no. 2 (1997 June): pp. 34-36.
Hill Collins, Patricia. “It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation,” Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial and Feminist World, ed. by Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Mayo, Yolando Quiñones and Resnick, Rosa Perla. “The Impact of Machismo on Hispanic Women,” Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, Fall 1996, Vol. 11, Issue #3, pp. 257-78, Mar. 12, 2002. <http://ehostvgw11.epnet.com/fulltext.asp?PLDirect=1&resultSetId=R00000000&hitNum=1….>.
Schutte, Ofelia. “Cultural Alterity: Cross-Cultural Communication and Feminist Theory in North-South Contexts,” Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial and Feminist World, ed. by Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University