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— — — .
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’
s Editing of Raymond Carver
’
s
What We
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Press , 1977 .
Carver Review 1 ( 2008 ): 53 – 74 .
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Please? New York : Vintage Contemporaries ,
and 31, 2007. 92 – 100. (Text of “ Beginners ”
1992 . 9 – 16 .
100 – 110 .)
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— — — . Raymond Carver: Collected Stories . New
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147 – 61 .
24
Multi - Ethnic Female Identity and
Denise Ch á vez ’ s The Last of the
Menu Girls
Karen Weekes
The quest for identity is considered by some critics to be the universal theme of litera-
ture, from The Odyssey to Hamlet to The House on Mango Street . Texts from all over the
world refl ect this focus, as male and female heroes explore both external and internal
worlds in order to form themselves (Rivero 240). Eliana Rivero posits that “ Defi ni-
tions and expressions of self
-
identity are especially central to the emergence and
development of a minority literature ” because a group that is not accepted as part of
the mainstream of American culture “ struggles to claim validity for itself by affi rming
sui generis values. This affi rmation of idiosyncratic features defi nes the group ’ s unique-
ness and legitimizes its claims for acceptance, on its own terms, by the larger society ”
(240). Women fi nd themselves in this position of outsider as well, trying to assert
and establish a sense of identity in a male - defi ned world, and the woman writer fi nds
the situation especially troubling as she strives to assert her individuality in the face
of what is, historically, a very masculine literary tradition.
As pointed out by James Nagel in his recent The Contemporary American Short -
Story Cycle: The Ethnic Resonance of Genre
, many contemporary minority writers,
including Sandra Cisneros, Jamaica Kincaid, and Denise Ch
á
vez, have used the
unique structure of the short story cycle to explore this fragmented sense of iden-
tity. The cycle is especially useful to depict the experience of girls facing society ’ s
confl icting demands. In this mode of writing, disparate pieces that often feature the
same protagonist can be joined to create a sense of the multifacetedness of a char-
acter. Each story dramatizes a separate aspect of her personality, but it is only
through a consideration of the work as a whole that a full knowledge of this char-
acter is acquired. This structure, maintaining a tenuous balance between the sig-
nifi cance of the parts and the whole, is the perfect literary structure to present the
tangle of multiethnic female identity. In texts such as Ch á vez ’ s The Last of the Menu
Girls
, the protagonist
’
s self
-
image is not only split by the pull of her own ego
development opposing that of her childhood innocence, fear, and nostalgia but is
also fractured by the demands of her divergent cultures. Roc í o Esquibel is trying to
Denise
Chávez
381
meet both the expectations of a native ethnic culture and those of a patriarchal
Anglo society. However, these extrinsic demands are sometimes insidiously in
concert: the sexism of both cultures often encourages girls to be passive, which
confl icts with females ’ own internal needs for activity, autonomy, and experience in
order to fully develop a nascent identity.
Ch á vez recognizes the prominence of this struggle for women in her work, explic-
itly stating her interest in women ’ s themes, topics, and issues, especially those of
personal and expressive freedom. She sees her writing as a mirror of her culture, a
vehicle to educate, heal, and enhance understanding of Chicano 1 values and ways
of life.
Ch á vez herself was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on August 15, 1948. She
returned in the 1980s to live and work once again in this town, near Texas and
approximately forty miles from the United States – Mexico border, which is an appro-
priate setting for an author who writes in both Spanish and English and whose work
prominently features the Borderlands. She earned a BA in drama from New Mexico
State University in 1971, an MFA in drama from Trinity University in 1974, and an
MA in creative writing from the University of New Mexico in 1984.
Ch á vez has been instrumental in bringing attention to Chicana writing, which for
many years had diffi culty fi nding its place in literary criticism. In the last few decades,
several groundbreaking collections by women of color have presented a range of expe-
riences of minority females. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of
Color , edited by Cherr í e Moraga and Gloria Anzald ú a (1981) , and Making Face, Making
Soul: Haciendo Caras , edited by Anzald ú a (1990) , both collect essays, poems, personal
narratives, and other creative works by women from all four of the largest minority
groups in the United States. These books emphasize the differences among ethnic
women; the culture and history of each group creates expectations, gender roles, and
other infl uences that shape lives in divergent ways. Gloria Anzald ú a ’ s Borderlands/La
Frontera (1987) emphasizes the specifi c cultural demands placed on Latina women
writers, and the fragmentation of the text exemplifi es the identity stressors inherent
in trying to meet those demands. These elements are also central in Ch á vez ’ s The Last
of the Menu Girls .
The upsurge at the end of the twentieth century in the publication of short story
cycles has featured several excellent texts that portray Chicanas. These women have
historically been marginal subjects who were only rarely written about with any
depth or sympathy, even by Chicanos. For example, Rudolfo Anaya
’
s infl uential
novel Bless Me, Ultima (1972) includes a poignant portrait of the ancient curandera ,
but here the Chicana is still exoticized rather than presented as a realistic character.
Chicanas were infrequently represented either as authors or as characters until the
mid - 1970s.
Although the fi rst Chicana novel appeared in 1954 (Fabiola Cabeza de Vaca, We
Fed Them Cactus
), over twenty years passed before the contemporary fl owering of
Chicana writing began: Berta Ornelas published Come Down from the Mound in 1975
and Isabella R í os published Victuum in 1976. During this twenty - year gap, both the
382
Karen Weekes
Women ’ s Liberation Movement and the Chicano Movement began to garner extensive
attention and support, infl uencing the characterization of Hispanic females. Social
movements freed Chicana authors to expand the scope of their characters from the
maternal, seductive, or mystical stereotypes to fully developed, multidimensional
fi gures. These writers ’ contemporary tales often feature complex, “ slice - of - life ”
characters who are trying to resolve the confl icts inherent in family, work, and
individuation.
Texts that focus on a protagonist who is trying to establish her identity, both for
herself and to others, are often categorized as
Bildungsromane.
These narratives of
development can fall into a variety of genres. The development of character through
a non - linear sequence is clearly a strength of the short story cycle, and this mode of
writing frequently features this subject matter.
Hispanic authors must invent the Bildungsroman anew to refl ect experiences specifi c
to their culture, and their protagonists must invent themselves as well, exploring
uncharted and frightening territory. These protagonists generally resist the Anglo
cultural impulse toward valorization of autonomy at the expense of connection, instead
confi guring themselves within the traditions of family and community. Oftentimes
the process of creating a self is intimately united with other types of creativity, so
that the Bildungsroman becomes inseparable from the genre of the K ü nstlerroman , or
narrative of artistic development.
The K ü nstlerroman strikes the same particularly resonant chord as the Bildungsroman
has for recent female authors. Linda Huf notes that women “ over the years have written
proportionately fewer artist novels than men ” but that the number has increased
considerably since the 1963 publication of The Feminine Mystique and the Women ’ s
Liberation Movement. She remarks on how these new books feature a determined
heroine who “ is wrestling, like Jacob, with her angel – the ‘ Angel in the House, ’ as
Virginia Woolf called her. More and more artist heroines are refusing to be selfl ess,
sacrifi cing, self - effacing. They are declining to give priority to the needs of others ”
(151 – 2). Considering one ’ s own needs of equal importance with those of others, espe-
cially one ’ s personal creative needs, is particularly diffi cult for minority writers with
strong cultural expectations of passivity and docility that oppose females ’ engaging
in studious or artistic work.
Ch á vez ’ s The Last of the Menu Girls features a young protagonist, Roc í o Esquibel,
who experiences many of the struggles of the Chicana writer. However, the text is as
much a Bildungsroman as it is a K ü nstlerroman , since Roc í o ’ s desire to write only surfaces
in the last few stories. The perspective throughout is from Roc í o, and her ability to
articulate serves a developmental function that is enhanced, but not eclipsed, by her
becoming a writer. The point of view serves to crystallize Roc í o ’ s cultural identity.
One of the chief themes of the text is this diffi culty of defi ning female and minority
identity, especially in a patriarchal Anglo culture.
In an interview with Ch á vez, Annie Eysturoy identifi es “ the relationship among
women ” as a theme of the book. Ch á vez assents but expands the range of connections
she strives to represent, including also “ the relationship to our spirit, to our dreams,
Denise
Chávez
383
to our alter ego, to ourselves; the relationship to ourselves when we are young. It is
like there are all these different personalities and we have all these relationships to
the me of this time and the me of that time ” (Eysturoy 165 – 6). This vision of a
multiple self is refl ected in the structure of The Last of the Menu Girls , a short story
cycle that unites disparate pieces into a multifaceted whole.
One feature of the cycle that works particularly well to represent the various threads
of Roc í o ’ s persona is the fl uctuation of chronology. Rather than following a sequential
timeline, as a traditional novel would, the cycle can, and in this case defi nitely does,
move back and forth in time to reveal Roc í o ’ s metamorphosis from a na ï ve young girl
to a fully integrated adult.
In keeping with Roc í o ’ s development into a mature young woman who recognizes
many gender - based confl icts inherent in her dual cultures, the Esquibel family struc-
ture lends itself to a portrayal of the various relationships between women. With the
father physically absent in all but one of the stories, the narrative attention shifts from
marital or father – daughter dissonance to that between daughters or between mother
and daughter. Outside the family, women enact a variet
y of personal and professional
roles for Roc í o to pattern herself upon or in opposition to, from the lesbian Chicana
nurse in “ The Last of the Menu Girls ” to the bitter Anglo landlady in “ Space Is a
Solid. ” The females effect a responsive development in Roc í o ’ s self - awareness that few
of the males inspire.
Ironically, her father ’ s name, “ Salvador, ” translates as “ savior, ” when he is anything
but the saving grace of the family in his physical and emotional removal from their
lives. The literal translation of Roc í o ’ s name is “ dew, ” indicating her freshness and
na ï vet é . Her mother, Nieves, has a name that means “ snow ” ; thus both mother and
daughter have names with a similar derivation, tied to the life - giving properties of
water, especially in the arid New Mexico region in which the book is set. However,
“ dew ” connotes morning and fresh beginnings, while “ snow ” connotes literal or sexual
frigidity. Both terms are connected with purity, but Roc í o ’ s purity stems from her
youth and virginity while that of Nieves stems from the celibacy of her romantic and
sexual abandonment.
All seven of the stories in The Last of the Menu Girls focus on Roc í o as she gradually
loses her na ï vet é and becomes a mature adult. Because of the chronological fl uctuations
in the text, her age varies from childhood to young adulthood. Roc í o, her mother,
and her younger sister, Mercy, all live in a small middle - class neighborhood near the
Mexican border. The physical absence of Roc í o ’ s father, who left the family, is in
counterpoint to the family ’ s lingering thoughts of him.
The fi rst story, “ The Last of the Menu Girls, ” establishes most of the elements that
remain relatively stable throughout the text: the Esquibels ’ neighborhood and home,
which is established as middle - class by virtue of Roc í o having her own room that is
decorated to her individual taste (featuring dark purple); the parents ’ divorce; and a
cast of characters that includes Roc
í
o, her mother and sister, and the handyman
Regino Su á rez. It also introduces many of the themes that will resonate throughout
the cycle, such as Roc
í
o
’
s progress toward maturation, her confl icting drives for
384
Karen Weekes
identity, Hispanic culture and the schisms both within and around it, and the physical
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 83