Chicana Epiphenomenal
Epiphenomenal interpellation: the occurrence of a secondary effect or byproduct that arises but does not casually influence a process, identity, individual or entity. Outcomes of these secondary effect(s) or byproduct(s) are uniquely non-recurrent because of when and where they occur for the individual in each instance of occurrence.
Who are we? How are we, when we are we?
Chicana, we are decendant from Mexico in a number of ways and moments in history. Some of us are more European than others—some more African than others. All of us are aware of the color differences and where these come from. Most of us are less than desirous to admit those color differences exists—we are always willing to be critical of them, most especially when they appear in ourselves. We live in smoldering spaces of self-loathing, often not realizing how destructive that color consciousness can be.Chicana, lives in a variety of ways in the United States, some traveling across the border, some watching the border travel away from them. All knowing there is a border between when and how they are American. Chicana, speaks Spanish, Spanglish or she doesn’t speak it at all—feeling not Chicana enough in some parts of the family usually at weddings or funerals, the closest thing to a family reunion. Let her bring a Gringo date and the family won’t be at all surprised, no habla, no sabe.
Chicana, we are born when man is born of tribes ruled by mother, then at the end of a masculine cosmic age, with the death of Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl at the conquest by Cortez we rise in a feminine cosmic age with the emergence of Tonatzin, then La Virgen Guadalupe.
Chicana, fluency is out of necessity—she is quite often the translator for many, degree of expertise in official documents a requirement. “In my house we speak Spanish, outside or at school it is English. I translate for all of my cousins, the neighbors—I don’t mind but sometimes I worry I might say something wrong, or something I don’t understand.”
