PJAS 18-7
Ewa Barbara Łuczak
Domesticana rasquache: Ana Castillo’s So Far from God
Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 18 (2024), pp. 91-102
Abstract: This essay focuses on So Far from God (1993) by Ana Castillo, one of the most celebrated Chicana writers from the Chicana literary movement of the 1990s. Seeking an alternative to the American mainstream feminist aesthetics of the 1980s, which relegated spirituality and vernacular female culture to the margins, and challenging the patriarchy of Chicanismo of the Chicano Renaissance, Castillo consciously constructs her own aesthetics. The baroque aesthetics of the female vernacular culture developed in So Far from God can be seen as a manifestation of Castillo’s aesthetic and epistemological investigations. On the one hand, it is indebted to the Chicano vernacular rasquachismo of everyday kitsch and on the other, it anticipates a distinctly female version of rasquachismo codified by Mesa-Baines as domesticana rasquache.
Keywords: Chicana literature, rasquache aesthetics, Ana Castillo, Chicana feminism
DOI: 10.7311/PJAS.18/2024.07