The importance of writing as a method of creating identity in feminist Chicana literature: Terri de la Peña’s margins.

Abstract

The stronghold of the struggle of the Chicana, in general, as well as that of the Chicana writer in particular, has been that of eradicating all the prejudices which have misdescribed them as compliant women. Stereotypes had been created and sustained by their male counterparts throughout the years, becoming instrumental in the assimilation and “passive ” acceptance by the Chicanas of these deleterious preconceived ideas. The Chicana lesbian writer Terri de la Peña has endeavoured to abolish all the prejudices that had constrained the existence of the Chicanas in general, and that of the Chicana lesbians in particular, as well as the taboos they had been forced to assimilate and transmit. By means of writing, Verónica, protagonist of de la Peña´s Margins, abandons the “margins ” of her story to take a central position in the development of her new life, in which she fights to renegotiate her space within her community as well as to re-educate its members into a more tolerant, integrative understanding of life.