Next of Kin

Abstract

Introduction Staking Family ClaimsThe family is the place where, for better or worse, we learn how to love.• • • Cherríe Moraga, Loving in the War Years: Lo que nunca pasó por sus labios (1983) I n her "Introduction" to the collection Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings, sociologist Alma M. García notes how intersecting discourses of nationalism, family, and machismo provoked Chicana feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s, the historical moment that gave way to organized struggles for Mexican American civil rights and cultural empowerment known as the Chicano movement.Although many issues contributed to the development of Chicana feminist thought, the ideological critique of sexism or machismo, the term most frequently used within a Chicano context, contributed significantly to the formation of Chicana feminism.Chicana feminists, as active participants in the Chicano movement, experienced the immediate constraints of male domination in their daily lives.Their writings express their concern with traditional gender roles within Chicano families that relegated women into secondary roles.Chicana feminists challenged the portrait of the so-called "Ideal Chicana" drawn by Chicano cultural nationalists.(A.García 1997, 5) Furthermore, within various movement contexts, strands of Chicano cultural nationalism tethered to machismo promoted a family ideal that, extrapolating from Christopher Lasch, García identifies as a "safe 'haven in a heartless world' ." In this romanticized haven-a "nation" defined within Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.

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