Present
Day Authors
Associate
Adjunct Professor Becky Villarreal
Brief
Lecture:
In the latter part of the
twentieth century, women writers at last have a room of
their own. Writers such as Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison,
and Lorna Dee Cervantes write poignantly about the
challenges most women face today in relation to their
ethnicity, sexuality, families, and career
choices.
In today's
contemporary
literature,
protagonists are often searching for their identities. In
my master's thesis, I noted parallels between
Odysseus
and Rudolfo Anaya's young protagonist in Bless Me,
Ultima. In Anaya's story, the protagonist hears the
call of La Llorona, who has been compared to Circe and
the Sirens. Like Odysseus, the protagonist in Bless
Me, Ultima encounters many dreadful foes before
returning home to his family and to his roots.
In
Joseph
Campbell's
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the mythological
hero must undergo various stages, including separation,
initiation, and return. While on his adventure, he
encounters a shadowy presence that guards the passage. In
The
Odyssey,
there are several dark forces, but the primary foe is
Poseidon, who dooms Odysseus to a life of wandering the
seas. In Bless
Me Ultima, this dark force is La Llorona whose origin
has also been linked to Euripides' Medea,
an enraged, vindictive woman, who kills her children to
make her husband suffer. The Mexican Llorona in Anaya's
novel similarly kills her children and then spends the
rest of eternity grieving for her lost children and
luring men and children to join her in a watery grave.
The Llorona figure is also
prevalent in the works of Mexican American writer Sandra
Cisneros, another favorite author of mine.
Step
One: After reading the
selections above, please complete Quiz 4 in
Blackboard.
Step
Two: Please check the
schedule
to see when Paper 2 (final exam) is due. There is no
grace period for this assignment.
Created
by Becky Villarreal Austin Community College
2002
