The
Lucha
Corpi, whose detective fiction is the subject of this essay, has
written four
mystery novels that explore Chicano politics, history and culture from
multiple
perspectives, including that of a Chicana clairvoyant detective named
Gloria
Damasco.
Since
the hard-boiled private eye of classic detective fiction is a white
male, this
writer and other writers of multicultural detective fiction are mapping
uncharted territory with their detectives of color, and in doing so,
are transforming
and shaping the genre.(1) Recent detective
fiction by women like Sara
Paretsky, Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, and Patricia Cromwell, who all
have
female sleuths, and by gay and lesbian authors have also brought new,
fresh
perspectives to the genre. Many of these authors, like Lucha Corpi,
challenge
assumptions about race, gender, criminal activity, and culture
represented in
the hard-boiled tradition of authors such as Dashiell Hammett and
Raymond
Chandler. (2) Tim Libretti observes that
Corpi’s first detective
novel Eulogy for a Brown Angel not
only investigates the mystery of an individual crime related to the
death of a
young boy, but also highlights “the larger crimes against people of
color
through the mechanisms of colonialism and internal colonialism” (64).
In this essay, I examine the construction of the Chicana detective, Gloria Damasco, in Corpi’s detective novels; I explore how gender, ethnicity, and culture shape Gloria’s perspective and contribute to the non-hegemonic point of view and critique of the dominant culture inscribed in these texts. In particular, I demonstrate how Gloria Damasco, a clairvoyant detective, brings a new Chicana feminist aesthetic and cultural perspective to the genre of detective fiction.
Corpi’s narratives help
to
redefine American literature by inscribing the experiences of the
Chicano
community, previously excluded from the literary canon, in general, and
from
the genre of detective fiction, in particular. These novels are similar
to
Chicano detective fiction written by male authors like Rudolfo Anaya,
Rolando
Hinojosa, Manuel Ramos or Michael Nava in that they present an
oppositional
discourse to the ethnic discrimination and economic oppression of
Chicano
communities within mainstream Euro-American culture. However, Corpi’s
critique goes beyond this; she voices protest against the gender
discrimination
suffered by Chicana women within a patriarchal social order and also
denounces
the male chauvinism of many Chicanos within the Chicano Movement of the
1970s.
I argue that Gloria Damasco is a sleuth with a Chicana feminist
consciousness
and is an example of the new mestiza
that Gloria Anzaldúa writes about in Borderlands.
One
critic of multicultural detective fiction refers to this emerging genre
as
“murder with a message” and “murder from the other
side;” she theorizes that the detective story is “in the hands of
authors whose cultural communities are not those of the traditional
Euro-American male hero, whose cultural experiences have been excluded
from the
traditional detective formula, and whose cultural aesthetic alters the
formula
itself” (Adrienne Johnson Gosselin, xi-xxi). The specific ways in which
historical, political, cultural, and social conditions shape and inform
the
detective novels of writers of color represents a new area of academic
discourse. My reading of Lucha Corpi’s three Chicana mystery novels in
her Gloria Damasco trilogy is informed by recent theoretical work on
multicultural detective fiction and by Chicana feminist theory,
especially the
work of Gloria Anzaldúa.
Largely due to ground-breaking contributions of Mikhail Bahktin and the postmodern questioning of the distinction between “high” and “low” cultural practices, and to the emergence of cultural studies as an academic discipline, the popular genre of detective fiction has become more widely accepted as “valuable” literary production, worthy of serious scholarship within academia. Classes on detective fiction are now being taught at many colleges and universities throughout the country; and largely due to multiculturalism, there is an increased awareness about the importance of including works by women and writers of color in these classes. Nevertheless, it is important to note that there is still much debate and resistance to the inclusion of detective fiction and other popular genres in the curriculum by some professors who defend the traditional canon. (3)
Prior
to the 1990s, there were very few Chicano mystery novels. According to
one
critic, Chicano/a writers probably shied away from the popular genre of
detective fiction because “they felt it lacked the intellectual respect
and cultural capital to earn them the literary reputations they
desired”
(Rodriguez, 138). Recently, however, there has been a boom of Chicano/a
writers
publishing detective fiction. Rudolfo Anaya and Rolando Hinojosa are
two of the
most well known Chicano authors who have written detective novels.
Hinojosa’s novel, Partners in Crime
(1985) is characterized by murders and crimes in the
According
to Chicano literary critics, “These writers are producing new literary
models that may be viewed as forms of social criticism and cultural
representation. Moreover, these writers are modifying the genre by
transforming
the detective protagonist from white and middle- or upper-class, as in
the
classical tradition introduced by Edgar Allan Poe and honed by Sir
Arthur Conan
Doyle, to Raza working-class personas” (Lomelí, Márquez,
and Herrera-Sobek, 298). Another characteristic of the Chicano
detective novel
is a different worldview. Unlike the hard-boiled or classic detectives,
who
represent “solitary, existential perspectives, Raza detectives
represent
a community view” (Lomelí, Márquez, and Herrera-Sobek,
301). Most Chicano detectives have a worldview that is communal,
acutely aware
of racism and social injustice, and politically committed. As Chicano/a
detective fiction writers “continue to explore and transform the
traditional detective formula, the Raza detective promises to become a
vigorous
agent for social and cultural change” (Lomelí, Márquez,
and
Herrera-Sobek, 302). This is definitely the case with respect to
Corpi’s
Gloria Damasco trilogy, as my analysis will demonstrate.
The
most well known writer of detective fiction with a Chicana private eye
is Lucha
Corpi. Also, Chicana poet and author Alicia Gaspar de Alba has recently
published Desert Blood (2005), a
mystery novel that raises awareness
about the deaths of more than 350 young women who have been murdered in
Juárez since 1993 and whose bodies have been found in the
desert. This
novel’s protagonist, like Gaspar de Alba, is from
Lucha
Corpi’s books present a Chicana, feminist perspective that is critical
of
the male dominance and sexism of the Chicano Movement; in Eulogy
Gloria Damasco comments that “Chicano nationalism and
feminism didn’t walk hand in hand before or during the summer of
1970” (66). She denounces machismo
and violence towards women. This is particularly evident in Black
Widow’s Wardrobe in which
the protagonist Licia Lecuona, who murdered her husband after years and
years
of physical and emotional abuse, sees herself as the reincarnation of
La
Malinche. Carlota Navarro, a character in Cactus
Blood, was sold in
In
addition to Corpi’s critique of patriarchal gender relations and
representation of the victimization of women, she presents very strong,
independent Chicana women in all of her novels. As Carol Pearson has
rightly
observed, “the author resists by constructing Chicana subjects, and
presenting their contributions to the struggles of their people. Her
themes
reflect several aspects frequently seen in Chicana cultural resistance
and
expression” (39). Referring to the strong women characters in her
fiction, Corpi asserts: “I most definitely am attracted to the women
characters
that are strong, able to take responsibility for their actions and deal
with
the freedom they have . . . It always surprises me what I have learned
and
still learn from them. Through all of them I have been able to gain a
much
wider perspective and to review some things I used to believe” (Ikas,
76).
Corpi’s
mysteries not only captivate the reader with their compelling “who done
it plots,” but they also document important events in the Chicano Civil
Rights struggle of the late 1960s and 1970s and explore Mexican and
Chicano/a
myths (like La Malinche), history, identity and culture. As Ralph
Rodriguez
rightly observes, Lucha Corpi “investigates the various historical
shifts
and constructions of Chicanidad since the Chicano/a movement (roughly
1965-75)
more systematically than her Chicano counterparts writing in the
detective
genre. Her Gloria Damasco series seeks to better understand how history
and
memory shape identity and to gauge their corresponding impact on
political
movements” (140). Carol Pearson has also observed that “the
individual growth of Corpi’s characters is never separated from the
growth of the collective . . . Both Gloria Damasco and Lucha Corpi have
found
ways to make a contribution as a woman, and yet maintain a connection
to, and the
support of, their people and the movement” (50).
Gloria Damasco
is the
protagonist of Corpi’s trilogy Eulogy
for a Brown Angel (1992), Cactus
Blood (1996), and Black Widow’s
Wardrobe (1999). Corpi’s fourth detective novel, Crimson
Moon (2004) features Dora Saldaña, another Chicana
detective who first appears in Black
Widow’s Wardrobe. Justin Escobar, Gloria’s business partner and
lover, collaborates with Dora to solve the cases presented in Crimson Moon. Since Gloria Damasco
doesn’t play a prominent role in Crimson
Moon, I will not include an analysis of this novel in this essay.
However,
I do want to mention that Crimson Moon (like
the Damasco series of novels) documents many important historical and
cultural
events in the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. The backdrop of this
latest novel
is the student movement and strikes at
Lucha
Corpi’s mystery novels Eulogy for a
Brown Angel, Cactus Blood and Crimson
Moon document the
experiences of members of the Chicano
community, including political activists, and a wide range of male and
female
characters from different social classes, living in
Corpi’s
fiction unsettles the conservative tendencies of the traditional
American
detective novel, which tend to reinforce the status quo of mainstream
Euro-American culture. Generally speaking, the formula of the
traditional
detective novel restores order to society through the resolution of a
crime by
bringing the criminal to justice. The reader of this genre (presumably
a White
middle-class reader) derives pleasure from having participated in
solving the
mystery and from having witnessed a return to a stable and orderly
world
following the chaos brought about by the crime. Corpi’s novels provide
an
alternative perspective, which challenges many of the assumptions upon
which
the conventional formula of the genre is based. One of the main
assumptions
that is subverted by Corpi’s fiction, as well as by other writers of
color of the genre, is that of the White, middle-class reader. She is
reaching
out to a wider readership, that includes Chicanos and other people of
color.
Her characters reflect the diversity of the Chicano/a community and
include
many working-class characters, recent immigrants, and other
disenfranchised
members of society. Corpi’s fiction uncovers the fact that sometimes
the
police are the criminals who unjustly harass and beat innocent
protesters, such
as revealed in her representation in Eulogy
of the police brutality at the Chicano Moratorium march in
Corpi’s
writing is politically grounded and ideologically radical, in contrast
to the
conservative nature of most detective fiction. Tim Libretti has argued
that
Corpi’s “Chicana political perspective rethinks issues of
criminality and injustice” (63). He argues that this writer not only
solves crimes, but more importantly, exposes the history of racial
oppression
and “demystifies the ideologies of ‘race’ (criminalization,
colonization, discrimination, etc.) which underwrite those
mechanisms”(64).
In this manner, Lucha Corpi offers an alternative point of view, which
serves
to deconstruct many of the racial stereotypes found in the mainstream
mystery
novel, which all too often criminalizes African American and Latino
characters.
In
the three novels, the reader witnesses Damasco’s spiritual growth,
evolving feminist consciousness, and maturity as a private investigator
over a
period of two decades from the time we meet her in 1970 through 1992.
At first,
the protagonist is frightened by what she refers to as her “dark
gift” of clairvoyance; we witness her growing acceptance of this
quality
and even her welcoming of it as a unique way to solve her mysteries in
her
detective work.
It
is only after her husband’s death in 1988 that Gloria resumes her
passion
for solving crimes. Darío, himself a physician at the Helping
Hands
clinic, had pressured Gloria into choosing between him and their
daughter or
continuing the investigation into the death of Michael David Cisneros
Jr., the
child whose corpse she had discovered at the Chicano Moratorium march.
Darío uses emotional blackmail when he issues his wife the
following
ultimatum: “These extrasensory experiences of yours are obviously more
important to you than your own safety” [. . .] “What is more
important for you, solving this case or keeping our marriage and family
together? This is something you alone
will have to decide” (121). In response to the pressure from her
husband,
Damasco makes the difficult decision to abandon the investigation for
sixteen
years while she continues to raise their daughter Tania and works as a
speech
therapist at the speech center, where she has been employed since 1970.
Although
Damasco refuses to discuss the Cisneros case with anyone except her
best friend
Luisa, she continues to have visions and dreams related to Michael
David’s
murder. She confesses: “[S]ometimes in the middle of the night, I’d
wake up to a soprano’s voice singing the aria ‘Un bel di,’
sounding so clear and near that I swore the singer was in the house.
Whenever
this happened, just before I opened my eyes, Lillian’s face would flash
in my memory and a hand wearing a ring with a lion’s head would reach
out
and wrap around her neck” (122). This recurring prophetic dream
foreshadows one of the final scenes in Eulogy.
Damasco, unlike other detectives who are known for their fine skills in
deductive methods and rational thinking, relies on her “irrational”
visions and dreams as tools to help her solve crimes. These dreams,
visions,
and extrasensory perception are represented in the text as alternative,
subjective realities. We, as readers, witness the protagonist’s growing
tolerance for ambivalence and experiences that have no rational,
scientific
explanation. In Black Widow’s
Wardrobe Gloria experiences a moment of doubt as to whether her
seeing the
conquistadors at the Day of the Dead procession was a regression to the
past or
a hallucination, she consciously decides “not to pursue questions that
defied logical explanation” (159). She accepts these visions as real
without trying to understand them through logical reasoning. This
defies the
mechanisms operating in the traditional, classic detective novel.
Gloría
Anzaldúa provides a theory about the new
mestiza in her groundbreaking Borderlands/La
Frontera: The New Mestiza. This Chicana theorist argues that the
new
Chicana feminist “operates in the pluralistic mode” and that she
“not only sustains contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into
something else” (79). One of the goals of this new mestiza
consciousness, according to Anzaldúa, is to
“break down the subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner and to
show in the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is
transcended. The answer to the problem between the white race and the
colored, between
males and females, lies in healing the split that originates in the
very
foundation of our lives, our culture, our languages, our thoughts”
(80).
Through her affirmation of her mexicana/chicana cultural heritage and
her
growing acceptance of what she refers to as her “dark gift” of
visions and extrasensory perception, I argue that Gloria Damasco
contributes to
the creation of a new consciousness that helps to break down the
dualistic
thinking that forms the foundation of our Western philosophical
tradition and
that dominates the genre of classic detective fiction. The binary
oppositions
between rational and irrational, scientific and spiritual, logical and
intuitive, mind and body are called into question.
The
inclusion of indigenous and mestizo
perceptions of reality in these novels contributes to the creation of a
new
type of detective, such as Gloria Damasco, who has more tools to work
with than
the white male investigator such as Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade in the
tradition of the hard-boiled detective novels of Raymond Chandler and
Dashiell
Hammett. Critics of this genre have emphasized the positivistic nature
of
traditional detective fiction. That is to say, the detective fiction
formula is
based primarily on the assumption of the resolution of a crime through
the use
of deductive reasoning and the logic of cause and effect. With respect
to the
norms of the detective genre, William V. Spanos has pointed out that
“the
form of the detective story has its source in the comforting certainty
that an
acute ‘eye,’ private or otherwise, can solve the crime with
resounding finality by inferring causal relationships between clues”
(21). Damasco’s use of dreams and visions in her endeavor to solve
mysteries provides an interesting twist and an important innovation
that alters
the reified formula of the traditional detective novel.
The
characterization of Damasco as a clairvoyant is foregrounded in all
three
novels of the trilogy. The first
reference to this detective’s psychic powers is found in the
“Prelude” to Eulogy:
For
many years, every so often, I would sense the shimmering energy of a
presence,
somewhere at a distance. It came to me in the shape of a blue light,
with a
revolving force all its own. Once, while I was shopping at
This “Prelude” informs the
reader that this is not your typical “who done it” novel; the
reader’s curiosity is sparked and we are enticed to continue reading in
order to find out the answers to many questions. For example, what is
this
“blue light”? Is the narrator “crazy” or does she
really have extrasensory perception? Who is Justin Escobar and what
mystery
will they solve?
Later in this novel, Gloria
Damasco
explains that she went through a difficult process of learning to
accept her
psychic powers and extrasensory perception: “At age twenty-three I had
first confronted this other self, this psychic being who insisted on my
relinquishing
control of a part of my life to . . . to an automatic pilot. I went
through two
years of denial, and then worked slowly towards knowing what ailed me.
Eventually, I learned to accept this dark gift and to build the
delicate
balance on which my sanity rested” (1992: 123). The confessional tone
of
the just cited passage offers the reader a window into Damasco’s
private,
intimate side. We are privileged witnesses to her inner turmoil and
self-doubt
as well as her growing self-acceptance and feelings of empowerment
resulting
from her clairvoyance. Yet, what she refers to as her “dark gift”
is sometimes experienced as more of a burden than a gift. For example,
throughout Eulogy Gloria Damasco
expresses exasperation at her inability to decipher her many dreams and
prophetic visions related to Michael Cisneros Jr.’s death: “What
good were visions if there was no way to decode them? If their
effectiveness as
a tool to apprehend the murderer was nil?”(62).
During the first part of Eulogy the reader learns of Gloria’s confusion about her visions; she is reluctant to confide in her husband Darío about any details related to her psychic powers: “I purposely didn’t mention any of my ‘flying’ experiences. I suppose I felt embarrassed since I had always sought rational explanations for anything that happened to me, using intuition to support reason rather that the other way around.” (30)
However, the first-person
narrator does
let us, the readers, in on her “secret”; she describes her mental
state, referring to it as “neurotic lucidity”:
After a long
day of dragging around a psyche gone amuck, with only rage and fear as
ballast,
I now felt I was drifting into what I could only describe as neurotic
lucidity.
Sitting in the darkness, unable to go to sleep, I had a sense that I
was
looking at two sides of myself as if on a photographic negative—the
lighter areas being “reality”; the darker shades of colors, even
perhaps the absence of color, being optical illusions. (30)
Twenty years later, in Cactus Blood, this dark gift is
represented
as an asset in detective work that even her male partner and future
lover
Justin Escobar, under whose apprenticeship Gloria is working, has come
to
respect and rely upon. In fact, Justin takes Gloria’s visions very
seriously and consults her about them in their investigation of Sonny
Mares’s death; at one point Justin teases Gloria about not being sure
he
trusts her hunches, but he insists that he does
trust her visions (79).
Gloria Damasco’s
reliance
on dreams and visions, in addition to scientific evidence and hard
facts as an
aid in solving crimes is a unique contribution to the genre of
detective
fiction. She attributes her keen perception, intuition, and “dark
gift” of visions and dreams to her Mexican heritage. The belief in the
value of dreams and visions as a form of prophecy and understanding
reality is
common in Mexican and Chicano popular culture and folklore. In this
way, in can
be argued that Corpi is opening up the mystery genre and allowing for
cultural
diversity by offering a non-Eurocentric perception of reality, one that
includes knowledge and accepts as real, insights that come from
mysterious,
non-tangible sources such as dreams, visions, intuition, and
extrasensory
perception.
María Baldomar, one of
the
characters in Cactus Blood who is a curandera,
or healer, recognizes
Gloria’s radiant spirit and clairvoyance as a special gift. She
functions
as a sort of spiritual mentor who encourages Gloria to, in her words,
“let everyone know who and what you are” (95). Baldomar confides in
Gloria and shares her perceptions: “To look into the past, Sabina and I
were taught, is to look into the future. But it takes a certain kind of
talent,
a great gift, to see how the past will become the future. That’s what
your gift is all about” […] “People make fun of you . . .
they taunt you, unable to see the nature of your gift, afraid of it
many
times” (94). Another character in this novel with the ability to
predict
earthquakes by reading the signs in the mackerel sky and observing that
animals
go into hiding prior to a quake is Gloria’s mother. In fact, she has
correctly predicted the devastating earthquake that shook
Gloria
Damasco’s clairvoyance is a key element in her characterization and
also
in the development of the plot in each of these novels. For example, Cactus Blood opens with Gloria’s
vision of a rattlesnake in a thicket of prickly-pear cacti and a naked
women
tied to a huge, old cactus in the form of “a slumping female
Christ” (11). This recurring vision haunts Damasco until we, the
readers,
finally discover who this woman is at the end of the novel. Likewise,
Damasco’s so called “flying experience” and her vision of
Michael David’s abduction haunt her for many years until this crime is
solved and we discover who killed the child in the final scenes of Eulogy for a Brown Angel.
Black Widow’s
Wardrobe opens
with the
following description of Gloria’s recurring nightmare:
Not
day anymore, not yet night, it is the hour of the wild cat, the ocelot.
A woman
fans the fire in a stone stove. She wears a mid-length skirt underneath
a huipil with embroidered red flowers. Her
long hair streams down her back. Her back is to me and I cannot see her
face.
Her young daughter plays by her side. A brooding young man sits at the
kitchen
table, playing with a dagger, a gift from his father. Suddenly, without
saying
a word, he gets up, picks up the dagger, and walks towards the woman at
the
stove. He raises his hand. She turns. The fire flares up, and her hair
catches
on fire, then her clothes . . . (1)
When
Gloria first sees the Black Widow at the “Day of the Dead”
procession in the Mission District of San Francisco, she immediately
knows that
she is the woman in this recurring nightmare. She comments, “I
helplessly
realized that my feelings and dreams had become inextricably meshed
with the
threads of Black Widow’s life. I knew that the visions would follow,
and
that I would give myself no choice but to work towards freeing myself
from
their hold” (1). At this stage in her career as a private eye, Gloria
accepts the fact that her dreams and visions are inescapable and an
integral
part of her detective work. She no longer questions this, but rather,
is
resigned to accepting it as the reality of her life.
By
the end of the novel, the reader discovers that the young man who
stabbed Licia
at the Day of the Dead procession was, like in Gloria’s nightmare, her
own son. Also, the novel ends with Licia’s house mysteriously burning
down: “The fire department had found no evidence of arson. Although
neighbors swore they had seen a woman wearing a white dress enter the
house
just before the fire started, no human remains were recovered at the
site that
once was Black Widow’s dwelling” (193). Thus, although Gloria
successfully solves the mystery of who had tried to kill Licia, the
novel ends
with many unanswered questions. This, of course, is another example of
how
Corpi subverts the traditional genre.
In
solving the mystery of who is trying to kill Licia, Gloria Damasco has
another
recurring nightmare about a menacing hand: “Down a dark tunnel, I run
after someone, but I can’t tell who. A man’s hand emerges from the
darkness, the long, thin fingers and thumb wrapped around the pistol .
. . The
hand retreats back into the darkness. ‘Why did you take it from
me?’ questions a raspy voice—I cannot tell if a man or a
woman” (44). The inscription of these dreams adds to the suspense of
the
novel and invites the reader to participate in deciphering them in an
attempt
to solve the mystery.
In
Black Widow’s Wardrobe other
types of non-rational experiences are presented contributing to
Anzadua’s
claims about the new mestiza’s
acceptance of ambivalence and the overcoming of the Western binary
logic. For
example, serious discussions of regression to past lives,
reincarnation, karma,
the law of retribution, and hallucinations are all presented as real
possibilities. Ambivalence is embraced in this novel that raises more
questions
than it answers. Corpi questions the notions of an “absolute truth”
or “History” as fixed and knowable. She accepts the fact that there
are mysteries that can’t be solved and by the end of the novel she
claims: “I nearly believed that Licia was the reincarnation of La
Malinche. But despite everything I knew about her, Licia Román
Lecuona
had remained an enigma to me” (190).
In
addition to her visions, dreams and feminine intuition as
non-traditional tools
in solving crimes, Damasco also has an historical understanding of
racism in
the
Early
in Eulogy Damasco inscribes herself
as a participant in the Chicano Movement and describes the commitment
and
heightened political awareness of many young activists during the
1970s. She
uses the first-person plural pronoun “we” instead of the singular
“I” to emphasize the consciousness that was shared by many members
of the Mexican-American community who fought for ethnic equality and
economic
justice within a society that was hostile to Latinos:
In
the summer of 1970 everything anyone of us did had to be considered
according
to its political impact on the Chicano Community . . . In some ways, I
realized
that our movement for racial equality and self-determination was no
different
from others like it in other parts of the the world. But we were a
people
within a nation. Our behavior was constantly under scrutiny, our
culture
relentlessly under siege. (64)
Tim
Libretti has observed, “the commonplace theory of detective fiction as
an
inherently conservative genre fails to recognize that it is based in
assumptions about the demographic composition of a readership and the
ideological perspective of that readership and that if understood in a
different cultural and demographic context, the detective fiction
formula could
easily serve a politically radical and social transformative function”
(67). Both Eulogy for a Brown Angel
and Cactus Blood inscribe a
politically radical ideology and register a view of
As
part of her investigation into the death of Michael David Cisneros,
Damasco
does research into the history of the Peraltas, an old
Many
of the characters in these novels, in addition to the protagonist
Gloria
Damasco, have been active participants in and/or shaped by the Chicano
Movement
of the 1970s. The influence of the Movement plays a prominent role in
the plot
and the character development in both Cactus
Blood and in Eulogy for a Brown Angel.
As mentioned previously, the crime victim in Eulogy was
found dead on August 29,1970, the day of the National
Chicano Moratorium. This event marks an important landmark in raza history when more than 20,000
people marched down
Without supporting the radical
notion
that every Chicano in jail was a “political prisoner,” we accepted
as our right and responsibility the function of making sure that
justice was
dealt equally to everyone . . . For years, I’d walked around with
unresolved anger delicately balanced against the hope that one day our
social
and political condition would improve for us. (65)
The
Movement also plays a central role in Cactus
Blood, which records important events such as the 1973 United Farm
Workers’ Strike. Several of the novel’s characters—Art Bello,
Sonny Mares, Ramón Caballos, and Carlota Navarro—had been
activists dedicated to the cause of denouncing the deadly effects of
pesticides, which caused cancer and birth defects in hundreds of farm
workers
who had been exposed to them. Navarro herself suffers from seizures,
memory
lapses, and a bipolar mental illness induced by her exposure to
parathion. This
novel addresses other significant political issues such as the
persecution of
undocumented Mexicans, ethnic discrimination, domestic violence, and
the
exploration of role of Chicanas in the Chicano Movement.
Luisa
Cortez, Damasco’s close friend and poet who had been murdered in Eulogy, compiled and edited a manuscript
entitled The Chicana Experience. This
book, to be published by Women of Color Press, is based on interviews
with
Chicanas who were active in the political movement of the sixties and
seventies, offering a feminist perspective that had been silenced in
masculine
versions of Chicano history. Another gender-related social issue
presented in
this novel is rape. Carlota Navarro’s rape by her former employer when
she was only a teenager working as a housekeeper for a wealthy family
is
described in horrifying detail. Other rape victims in these novels
include
Lillian Cisneros who was raped by her own brother-in-law and Justin
Escobar’s girlfriend who had been raped and murdered by a serial
killer.
Josie Baldomar suffered from physical and emotional abuse by her
drunken
father; and was nearly raped by one of his buddies.
The
themes of domestic violence and rape are explored further and in more
depth in Black Widow’s Wardrobe. Corpi
makes it a point to mention that it was an all-male jury that “was out
to
get Licia” when they convicted her for murdering her abusive husband
(17); they did not buy the defense attorney’s argument of “what we
now call ‘battered wife syndrome’” (16). Also, her lawyer,
Lester Zamora, argued that Licia’s husband Peter had sexually abused
her,
but “at that time, the courts had not ruled that a husband could commit
the crime of rape against his own wife. When a husband forced himself
on his
wife, the act wasn’t seen as rape” (16). Domestic violence is
represented in this text as a cycle of abuse that is hard to break. As
a
three-year-old child, Licia was in the same room and witnessed when her
own
father, driven by unfounded jealously “shot Licia’s mother, then
blew his brains out” (15). The novel suggests that Licia was deeply
affected by this tragic event, which haunted her all of her life.
When
Gloria Damasco consults
Carol
Pearson has rightly observed that a “key contribution of Black
Widow’s Wardrobe is its
reconstruction of the legend and history of Malinche . . . Corpi weaves
together numerous accounts of various aspects of Malinche’s life, she
employs many different voices and perspectives, both historical and
fictional
to tell the story” (45). In fact, one of the ways in which Corpi
inscribes a Chicana feminist ideology into this text is through her
references to
Chicana scholars such as Norma Alarcón, who has written
groundbreaking
academic articles revising the figure of La Malinche. (4)
When
Gloria’s mother went to the Chicano Studies Library at UC Berkeley to
do
research on La Malinche, the librarian told her “to talk to Professor
Norma Alarcón” (95).
As
Gloria sets out to investigate the mystery of who is trying to kill the
Black
Widow, she simultaneously discovers valuable historical information
about La
Malinche that helps her to better understand her own cultural heritage
and
identity as a Chicana:
I
surmised that Chicana scholars and writers aimed at creating a new and
more
positive view of La Malinche. In doing so, they hoped to give Mexicanas
and
Chicanas a better sense of themselves, not as las hijas de
la chingada—the Indian woman violated and
subjugated by the conqueror—but as las
hijas de la Malinche—the daughters of an intelligent woman who had
exercised the options available to her and chosen her own identity. (97)
In
conclusion, Lucha Corpi presents us with an unforgettable Chicana
detective,
Gloria Damasco, a clairvoyant who uses her “dark gift” of visions
and dreams to solve her murder mysteries. Damasco also has an
extraordinary
ability to see how the past is linked to the future, and how the
Chicano Civil
Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s is linked to current struggles
for racial
equality and social justice. Corpi’s novels are examples of a new type
of
multicultural detective fiction that calls for an end to ethnic,
gender, and
class exploitation.
Notes
(1). Other
writers such as Tony Hillerman, Walter Mosley, and Rudolfo Anaya also
deal with
multicultural detective fiction. Although the critically acclaimed
Hillerman is
of Euro-American descent, all of his twelve murder mysteries take place
on the
Navajo reservation and his detectives, Liutenant Joe Leaphorn and
Officer Jim
Chee of the Tribal Police are Navajo and offer perspectives not usually
found
in the genre. Walter Mosley is an African American writer; five of his
six Easy
Rawlins’ mystery novels are set in postwar
(2). See Priscilla Walton’s “Bubblegum Metaphysics: Feminist Paradigms and Racial Interventions in Mainstream Hardboiled Women’s Detective Fiction,” in Multicultural Detective Fiction, for a discussion of the ways in which feminist detective fiction transforms the genre. Also, articles by Phyllis M. Betz, Stephen F. Soitos, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, and Jeffrey Langham on gay and lesbian crime fiction are found Multicultural Detective Fiction, edited by Adrienne Johnson Gosselin. This collection of essays explores the ways in which multicultural detective fiction is shaped by ethnicity, gender, and culture; the essays are all grounded in contemporary cultural and critical theories and offer important insights into this genre.
(3).The
so-called “Culture Wars” which
fueled so much debate at
(4). See Norma Alarcon’s article “Traddutora, Traitora: A Paradigmatic Figure of Chicana Feminism.” Cultural Critique 13 (1989): 57-87.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.
Corpi, Lucha. Cactus Blood. Houston: Arte
Público, 1995.
----. Eulogy for
a Brown Angel.
----. Black
Widow’s Wardrobe.
Johnson Gosselin, Adrienne,
ed. Multicultural Detective Fiction: Murder from
the Other Side.
Libretti, Tim. “Lucha Corpi
and the
Politics of Detective Fiction,” in Multicultural
Detective Fiction: Murder from the Other Side, ed.
Johnson Gosselin.
Lomelí, Francisco A.,
Teresa
Márquez, and María Herrera-Sobek. “Trends and Themes in
Chicana/o Writings in Postmodern Times,” in Chicano
Renaissance: Contemporary Cultural Trends, ed. David
R. Maciel, Isidro D. Ortiz, and María Herrera-Sobek.
Pearson, Carol. “Writing from
the
Outside In: Constructs of Memory and Chicanas as Private Eyes in Three
Detective Novels by Lucha Corpi.”
Interdisciplinary Literary
Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory Vol. 4, Number 1 (Fall
2002):
38-51.
Rodriguez, Ralph E. “Cultural
Memory and Chicanidad: Detecting History, Past and Present, in Lucha
Corpi’s Gloria Damasco Series.” Contemporary
Literature Vol. 43, Number 1
(Spring 2002): 138-170.
Spanos, William V. Report in Early Postmodernism: Foundational Essays. Ed.
Paul A. Bové.