‘‘Land’’ through identifying both the women wea-
vers’ practice and hers as efforts to represent the
earth’s creativity through their artistry. She thus
claims and images an inheritance and continuation
of a human cultural relationship with the rest of
the world in which respect, honor, and humility
define human-non-human interaction.
Another part of such recovery of heritage
consists of reaffirming the situatedness of culture,
the relationship of values, beliefs, practices, and
character to place. As Mora notes, ‘‘Many Mex-
ican American women from the Southwest are
desert women’’ (Nepantla53). This is not merely
anecdotal, but a delineation of identity and source
of pride, as well as a claim about historical resi-
dence (see Fast 30). Mora, for example, opens
‘‘Desert Women’’ inBorderswith the lines, ‘‘Desert
women know / about survival’’ (80). Survival must
be understood not as a minimal condition of exis-
tence but as an achievement against odds and
concerted efforts, not by ‘‘nature’’ but by other
cultures. Survival is thus not some passive form
of endurance, but an ongoing practice of resistance
and self-education. ‘‘Mi Madre,’’ the third poem of
Chants, celebrates ‘‘the desert’’ that is a ‘‘strong
mother’’ (9), because the skills not only to survive
but also to flourish there are part of what defines
the culture Mora celebrates. And the use of Span-
ish here differentiates herown cultural identity of
Mexican heritage from thepre-concert heritage of
desert Native Americans. Her use of turquoise
defines a commonality without conflating the dif-
ference between the native and immigrant cultures
sharing and struggling over the same terrain
through generations of inhabitation (Murphy 39).
Several poems that follow ‘‘Mi Madre’’ elabo-
rate the desert’s ‘‘strong mother’’ role. For example,
‘‘Lesson 1’’ and ‘‘Lesson 2’’ emphasize the desert’s
power to reassure and emotionally heal the speaker.
‘‘Lesson 1’’ consists of three stanzas, with the first
focusing on the desert’s return to balance after a
thunderstorm and the second depicting the speak-
er’s seeking out of the desert when ‘‘shaken, power-
less’’ with ‘‘sadness.’’ The third stanza imparts the
lesson. The speaker, knowing she is the ‘‘Mi’ja’’ of
the desert mother, feels free to express her emotions
while not surrendering to disempowerment and
learns to ‘‘cry away the storm, then listen, listen’’
(10). ‘‘Lesson 1’’ begins with rain pounding the land
and the lesson of the poem derives from the desert’s
rapid recovery from this down-pour. ‘‘Lesson 2,’’ on
the next page, also begins with water, but this time it
is rising from the river through the evaporative
power of sunlight. Here the desert again speaks a
lesson about overcomingsadness, but Mora has
added an interesting dimension. In the first lesson,
she emphasizes imitating the solidity of the land to
weather sadness and the lifestorms causing the emo-
tion. In the second lesson, she emphasizes imitating
the fluidity of the water, rising about her river of
troubles, strengthened, transformed, and active.
Mora moves from the desert mother’s instruction
to ‘‘listen’’ to her challenge to ‘‘dance,’’ recognizing
that both solidity and fluidity are processes of a
single dynamic system.
A third part of recoveryof heritage, particu-
larly for the building of a future, is to critique the
oppressive and exclusionary elements of one’s her-
itage: ‘‘to question and ponder what values and
customs we wish to incorporate into our lives,
to continue our individual and our collective evo-
lution’’ (Nepantla53). InNepantlaMora critiques,
for example, dominant Mexican culture’s suppres-
sion of indigenous peoples and languages
(28–29, 40). InChants, she critiques the sexual
oppression of women enforced through the virgin /
whore dichotomy by depicting the fear of two
brides-to-be in ‘‘Discovered’’ and ‘‘Dreams.’’ In
the first poem, the speaker fears that she will be
denied a dignified wedding and be ostracized by
the community if her loss of virginity is discov-
ered,andalso,perhaps,that‘‘herlover’’willsee
her as a ‘‘whore’’ (13), i.e., a sexually active being,
rather than as a wife, a supposedly sexually pas-
sive being. This speaker remains firmly subjected
to cultural oppression. In the second poem, the
bride-to-be has the same fear on her wedding day
of public censure, but relishes the sexual awaken-
ing she enjoyed the night before and speaks to her
groom as someone who understands. Here the
speaker breaks free ideologically of cultural
restrictions and ‘‘Mexican superstitions’’ (15) and
also asserts a relationship of equality with her
lover, unlike the speaker of the first poem. Inter-
estingly enough, this speaker seeks assistance from
the flowers for her hair—a symbol of nonhuman,
uncultured nature—to keep her secret through the
wedding.
Mora returns to this topic of gender oppression
and sexual inequality inBorderswith the poem
‘‘Diagnosis,’’ which treats a Chicana’s anguish
over being informed that she needs a hysterectomy,
because ‘‘She fears her man / will call her empty’’
(25). And she addresses it inCommunionwith ‘‘Per-
fume,’’ in which a man kills his wife in a jealous rage;
and with ‘‘Emergency Room,’’ in which the womanUncoiling