Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma [Hardcover]

Ana Castillo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1994

The 'I' in these critical essays by novelist, poet, scholar and activist/curandera Ana Castillo is that of the Mexic-Amerindian woman living in the United States. The essays are addressed to everyone interested in the roots of the colonized woman's reality. Castillo introduces the term Xicanixma in a passionate call for a politically active, socially committed Chicana feminism.

In "A Countryless Woman," Castillo outlines the experience of the brown woman in a racist society that recognizes race relations mostly as a black and white dilemma. Essays on the Watsonville strike, the early Chicano movement, and the roots of machismo illustrate the extent to which women still struggle against male dominance. Other essays suggest strategies for opposing the suppression of women's spirituality and sexuality by institutionalized religion and the state.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Castillo, who has earned respect for her novels--most recently, So Far from God --and poetry, here reflects on the place of Mexic Amerindian women and on the need for Xicanisma, a politically active and socially committed Chicana feminism, in national and global policy debates. In ten probing, passionate essays, Castillo explores the roles that women played in the Chicano/Latino Movimiento of the 1960s and 1970s; examines Mexicana activism in the 1986 Watsonville, California, canning strike; posits ancient Mediterranean roots for machismo; analyzes the consequences for women of the moral dualism, repression of sexuality, and fear of death that Catholicism and Communism share; assesses the "poetics of conscientizaci{¢}on"; and argues that eroticism, traditional healing and other forms of "lived spirituality," and "the mother-bond principle" represent essential elements in a Xicanisma that can speak to women and men of many cultures and need to be reintegrated into the lives of Mexic Amerindian women. The sometimes bristly, provocative essays in Massacre of the Dreamers will be a stimulating addition to ethnic and women's studies collections. Mary Carroll

Review

"immensely insightful in every sense of the word." -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author

"is at times brilliant, at times angry, at times poignant, but at all times riveting." -- Maria Herrera-Sobek, University of California, Irvine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 238 pages
• Publisher: Univ of New Mexico Pr; 1st edition (September 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826315542
• ISBN-13: 978-0826315540
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #438,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Xicanisma (pronouned Chi-canisma), March 15, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Hardcover)

It would be impossible to tell what this book did for me, especially during my days in law school. As a Chicana I felt isolated. I was often made to feel intellectually inferior. Castillo's brilliance soared like a flame to rescue my quickly freezing soul. If it weren't for this book I think I would have not survived that alienating environment bound to make me fail. She is not rhetorical but driven with reasoning. When women of color explain themselves we are dismissed as simply bitter. This book explained why I would have the right to be bitter and anger but why I must push forward. It saved my life.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Revision of Amerindian/Xicana Women's History!, July 23, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Paperback)

Massacre of the Dreamers is Ana Castillo's transdisciplinary book about the deconstruction of Mexic pallocentric "pyramids," as she herself puts it. By re(w)riting history, Castillo reconfigures the role of the Amerindian/Xicana/Mexican woman, allowing her to draw strength from Mesoamerican female goddesses. In this remarkable text, furthermore, Castillo employs her "own raw materials" (104) as an antidote to male-centered cosmic consciousness that operates in binary frames of dualisms, dichotomies, and schisms. In resurecting her spiritual mother goddesses, Castillo, like Anzaldua and Cisneros, reinserts "the forsaken feminine into our consciousness" (12). By exposing the manner in which the xicana has been "gagged" for hundreds of years, Castillo rejects colonization and mapps a xicana history with a difference that allows the Amerindian woman's various selves to coexist simultaneously, reinforcing her identity

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This woman is a seer., December 29, 1999

By 

tonantzin "Lori" (outside Asheville, NC, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Paperback)

Castillo has obviously tapped into her power for this one. Her fiction is moving, thought-provoking, angering, sometimes even humorous... but this essay collection is even more impressive. I'm sure some will consider her xicanista views extreme, but Castillo calls it as she sees it.