La Loca Explained

La Loca is a literary mythotype of the mad heroine found in Chicana literature related to La Llorona. Authors using the figure include Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros and Monica Palacios, as well as in the poem "La Loca de la Raza Cósmica" by the pseudonymous La Chrisx.^{[1] [2]}

La Loca in Ana Castillo's So Far from God is an outsider from the community;^[3] she dies at age three, but is miraculously resurrected revered like a saint.^{[4] [5]}

La Loca in Ana Castillo's So Far From God

In So Far from God (1993), Castillo created a fictive family living in Tome, New Mexico. It is a story about a family with a single mother and her four daughters, each of whom is used to examine a different stereotype of Chicanas and the struggles they faced. This novel also focused on the relationship of Chicanos, Native Americans, and Anglos in the Southwest.^[6]

One of the main characters is La Loca, who died when she was three after suffering a seizure.^[7] At her funeral she was resurrected and claimed that she had gone to hell, purgatory, heaven, and was sent back to earth by God in order to pray for everyone. Due to this she was called a Saint, and was named ‘La Loca Santa’ because of the bewildering behavior following her resurrection.^[8]

Several Literary Scholars have written about the character of La Loca. Delgadillo, in Forms of Chicana Feminist Resistance: Hybrid Spirituality in Ana Castillo’s So Far from God, focused on self-discovery being achieved by spiritual hybridity. She argues that La Loca was a symbol of resistance because she stood up against the oppression Chicanas faced such as that from the church. In Contemporary American Women Fiction Writers: An A-to-Z Guide, by Champion and Austin there was a focus on La Loca representing women being natural healers.^[9] It focused on people healing with plants and the remedies being passed down through generations. In Castillo's text, La Loca was one of the many characters she used to explore and critique the role women have in Mexican American culture as well as sexism and the oppression they face.

Bibliography

• Androne, Helane. Ritual Structures in Chicana Fiction. Missouri: Springer, 2016.
• Castillo, Ana. So Far from God. New York: Plume, 1993.
• Champion, Laurie and Austin, Rhanda. Contemporary American Women Fiction Writers: An A-to-Z Guide. Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002.
• Delgadillo . Theresa . 1998 . Forms of Chicana Feminist Resistance: Hybrid Spirituality in Ana Castillo's So Far from God . MFS Modern Fiction Studies . 44 . 888–916 . 10.1353/mfs.1998.0108 .

Notes and References

1. ed. Tey Diana Rebolledo The Chronicles of Panchita Villa and Other Guerrilleras - 2005 Page 116 "Mi Vida Loca - In this essay I want to briefly sketch out the cultural and societal boundaries perceived in the figure of La Loca, the mad heroine so often seen in Chicana literature, how her symbolic space is constructed by Chicana writers,... These are only a few of the many representations of locas; we could also include, for example, “La Llorona Loca: The Other Side” by Monica Palacios and the figure of Petra in Margarita Cota-Cárdenas's Puppet. "
2. The Chicana/o Cultural Studies Reader - Page 174 Angie Chabram-Dernersesian - 2006 "From another perspective "Crazy Queen/Woman/La Loca" offers more than just another invitation for Chicanas to rewrite the cause/ La Causa by incorporating difference, here gender, into the prevailing discourses of oppression and ...
3. Mills, Fiona. “Creating a Resistant Chicana Aesthetic: The Queer Performativity of Ana Castillo's So Far from God reprinted as essay Locating Gender in Modernism: The Outsider Female - Geetha Ramanathan - 2012 Page 126 "Fiona Mills also sees La Loca as being shunned by the community, an outsider who does not follow the community's script. She argues that “the Tome community renders La Loca the site of that which they regard as abject—namely, death, ..."
4. Nadine Gebhardt Female Mythologies in Contemporary Chicana Literature 2007 - Page 89 "The youngest daughter, La Loca (the crazy one), dies at age three, but is miraculously resurrected and henceforth revered like a saint. Except for La Loca, ... For the contemporary Chicana, she can also be a figure of comfort and hope."
5. Deborah L. Madsen Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature 2000- Page 99 "Her work places emphasis upon traditional Chicana cultural practices as an assertion of cultural identity and resistance to assimilation. These practices include cooking — for example, La Loca's recipes in the novel So Far from God — and the ..."
6. Delgadillo. Theresa. 1998. Forms of Chicana Resistance: Hybrid Spirituality in Ana Castillo's So Far from God. MFS Modern Fiction Studies. 44. Project MUSE.
7. Book: Castillo, Ana. So Far from God. Plume. 1993. New York.
8. Book: Androne, Helane. Ritual Structures in Chicana Fiction. Springer. 2016. New York. 53.
9. Book: Champion, Laurie. Contemporary American Women Fiction Writers: An A-to-Z Guide. Austin. Rhonda. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2002. Connecticut. 47.