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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Myth of the Latin Woman, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gender and Stereotypes
Belonging, Assimilation, and Cultural Heritage
Immigration, Education, and Upward Mobility
Culture, Translation, and Universalism
Summary
Analysis
Judith, at the time a graduate student at Oxford University, is on a bus in England when an Irish man starts serenading her with the song “Maria” from West Side Story. She feels uncomfortable because of his uninvited stereotyping of her as a woman from “Rita Moreno’s gene pool.” She recalls her lifelong struggle to “belong” in Anglo-American culture, as well as her self-consciousness about being seen as different because of her ethnicity. She struggles to control her facial expression in order to conceal her displeasure at the man’s performance.
From Judith’s frustration, readers can gather that, throughout her life, Judith has had a lot of practice controlling her emotions and considering how others perceive her in Anglo-American environments because of the way she looks. The opening scene introduces “María” as a symbol for the image of the Latina woman in the Anglo-American imagination, alluding to the “myth” of Latina womanhood that Cofer explains and breaks down throughout the rest of the essay. The mention of “Rita Moreno’s gene pool” suggests that one of the central features of this “myth” is that all Latina women, despite their differences in heritage as well as personality, are viewed as the same in Anglo-American culture. (Rita Moreno is a Puerto Rican actress who appeared in the 1961 adaptation of West Side Story.)
Themes
As a child of Puerto Rican immigrants in urban New Jersey, Judith was raised with a strong connection to her heritage, and her parents retained much of their lifestyle from the island. She grew up speaking Spanish, eating Puerto Rican food, and practicing Catholicism. She was also raised to adhere to strict gender roles, since female modesty upheld the family’s good reputation (and, conversely, female promiscuity reflected negatively on the family). These customs made it difficult for Judith to fit in with her white American peers, as she was made to wear clothes that they perceived as excessively formal.
Cofer’s description of her upbringing introduces one of the central ideas of the essay: that immigrants often experience tension between belonging in their adopted country and preserving the traditions of their native country. Learning different cultural customs in the United States and Puerto Rico evidently gives Judith a sense of confusion about her identity. It is hard enough to be an adolescent anywhere, but there are difficulties particular to the experience of being an immigrant.
Themes
Before a Career Day event in high school, Judith struggled to decide what to wear, as she did not have any models for professional dress for women outside of characters on television. Her only examples of formal wear were Catholic school uniforms, Sunday mass apparel, and family party outfits. Puerto Rican women’s notion of acceptable professional wear was considered inappropriately festive or ornamental by Anglo-American standards—as her Italian American friend commented, Puerto Rican women wore “everything at once.” While other girls wore “tailored skirts and silk blouses,” Latina women dressed in “tight skirts and jingling bracelets” that men interpreted as sexual advances. In the present, Judith thinks that although many teenagers feel “out of step,” this feeling is often especially pronounced for Latino teenagers.
The Puerto Rican gender roles mentioned previously result in different customs of dress for Puerto Rican and white American women. Judith learns that her notion of formal wear is considered unprofessional, foreshadowing her argument later in the essay that Latina women are often stereotyped as unprofessional for reasons other than their dress. Though Puerto Rican women intend to convey respectability through their clothing, the unfortunate and unfair result is often that white American men view them as sexually promiscuous because of their clothing choices, even if these choices have nothing to do with sexuality. This is one of the ways that cultural signals can be mistranslated.
Themes
Stereotypes of Latina women have resulted from “mixed cultural signals”—such as differing standards of formal dress—that Anglo-American men perceive differently than Latina women. The media perpetuates a narrative of Latina women as “‘sizzling’” or “‘smoldering,’” just like the foods they often cook. These narratives create the stereotype that Latina women are sexually promiscuous. Further, they materially affect the lives of Judith’s family members and neighbors, who describe being sexually harassed in their workplaces and threatened with losing their jobs if they protest.
Cofer mentions the media here to clarify that Latina women do not create stereotypes of themselves and that such stereotypes do not emerge organically. Rather, they are created by people in power who view Latina women as fundamentally different and foreign. These stereotypes, in aggregate, create the “myth” that Cofer references in the title of the essay—the “myth” that all Latina women are like “María” or “Rita Moreno.” While being only a “myth,” these stereotypes become harmful in the lives of real Latina women, who obviously are not constantly sexually available or submissive, despite the fact that this is the unfounded assumption many people (and particularly white American men) seem to make. The “myth” therefore becomes part of the structures of power that oppress Latina women in the United States.
Themes
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These stereotypes of sexual availability are created in Anglo-American society when Latina women are displaced from tropical environments governed by Spanish and Catholic cultural norms. In a warmer climate, Cofer explains, wearing bright colors matches the native flora and fauna, and revealing more skin allows for temperature regulation. Within Latin American cultural norms of Catholicism and machismo, different customs govern men’s relations with women: men are permitted to admire women’s beauty, but it is considered shameful and immoral to touch them. Thus, women are protected from sexual violence and harassment by their family and church communities.
While these stereotypes do not reflect most Latina women, they are somewhat grounded in reality, Cofer argues. This is because of cultural and environmental differences between the United States and most Latin American countries, which are in warm, tropical climates and are predominantly Catholic—it makes sense to wear more revealing clothes in warm climates, but the Catholic traditions and strong communal sense of morality often provide a certain kind of protection to women. But in New Jersey, where Judith moves, it is much colder, so wearing revealing clothes attracts more attention, and this attention isn’t necessarily as constrained as it would be in Latin America.
Themes
Older Puerto Rican women often recall to Judith how, on the island, they used to dress up and parade around the city in front of men they liked, and the men would express their admiration in the form of sexually implicit, yet never obscene, poems called “piropos.” “Decent” women, in turn, were expected to ignore the attention demurely. Indicating how culture can be “lost in translation,” American men, in contrast, view Latina women’s clothing as an invitation to touch them sexually. Judith experiences an instance of this cultural clash when, as a teenager, a boy at a dance tries to kiss her and when she is unenthusiastic, he says that he thought “Latin girls were supposed to mature early.”
Cofer certainly does not imply that the United States is liberal while Puerto Rico is regressive, or the other way around—she’s simply suggesting that the two are fundamentally different. While Catholic rules of honor constrain women, they also protect them; similarly, while gender roles in the United States might permit more freedom, they also permit racist and unwanted sexual attention. The “piropos” suggest the fundamental difference between the two cultures: such a display of sexual interest would be inconceivable in the United States, while it would be extremely inappropriate for a boy in Puerto Rico to give a girl an unwanted kiss.
Themes
As she gains professional success, Judith still experiences instances of harassment based on stereotypes of Latina women, though less frequently than she did before she gained such respect and recognition. At a hotel with a colleague, Judith is accosted by a middle-aged man in a tuxedo who is accompanied by his daughter. He shouts “Evita!” at her and loudly sings “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.” When his daughter asks for applause, she complies, hoping it will end the performance, but he continues, singing a lewd tune in which he rhymes “María” with “gonorrhea.” While his daughter wants Judith to laugh, she refuses, and instead tells the daughter to ask her father about his conduct in the army. Judith recognizes that the presumably wealthy, powerful man would likely not have treated a white woman like this, since he would have acknowledged her humanity. But he sees Judith as only a myth.
Here, Cofer brings back the symbol of “María” in order to show how such mainstream representations of Latina women become so prevalent that they come to shape perception of all Latina women, even those who share nothing in common with such characters. “Evita,” another one of the characters that the man stereotypically associates with Judith, references the popular musical of the same title, which focuses on the Argentine political leader Eva Perón (more commonly known as Evita). This reference, as well as the inclusion of the song “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” demonstrates how the “myth of the Latin woman” flattens and simplifies all Latina women into one homogenous category despite their differences. Judith is, of course, not from Argentina, but that does not matter to the man in the tuxedo, who sees her as a mere idea of what he thinks a Latina woman represents. Finally, when Judith tells the man’s daughter to ask her father about what he did in the army, she is referencing the reputation of American soldiers’ unsavory or objectionable sexual behavior while serving abroad—by saying this, Judith effectively flips the association of “María” with “gonorrhea” on its head. In doing so, she points out the hypocrisy of the stereotype that Latina women are sexually promiscuous, suggesting that it is actually far more likely for a white American man to be hypersexual, especially when seeing a Latina woman or woman of color (i.e., a woman whose individual agency he completely disregards) as the object of his desire.
Themes
Judith understands that she escapes some of the discrimination that other Latina women face because of her education, professional success, and English language ability. Other Latin immigrants, including her parents, are subjected to the stereotype that they are only fit to be domestic servants, waiters, or factory laborers. This stereotype reflects the limited options available to many Spanish-speaking immigrants and is perpetuated by movies and television in a manner similar to the stereotyping of Black women exemplified by “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind. Feminist Latina scholars argue that this stereotype perpetuates the limited class mobility of Latina women. However, even educated and successful Latina women are subject to the same stereotypes: a Chicana PhD student, a friend of Judith’s, recounts her advisor’s repeated surprise at her advanced vocabulary.
Again, Cofer argues that while these stereotypes of Latina women mostly obscure the truth of real Latina women’s lives, she explains here why they are, to some degree, grounded in reality because of the limited employment options available to many Latino immigrants in the U.S. In comparing these stereotypes to stereotypes about Black women, Cofer shows the similarity between the experiences of different racial minorities in the U.S. This is because similar conditions of poverty and limited professional opportunities can trap both Black and Latina women in low-paid work, which then creates a self-reinforcing narrative that such jobs are all these women are fit to do. This reality results in profound racial and gender inequality: to this day, Black and Latino people experience higher rates of poverty and are more commonly found in menial jobs than white Americans. Particularly for women of these groups, their experiences of racial discrimination are intensified because of their experiences of gender discrimination. Finally, Cofer explains that even when these stereotypes diverge from reality—i.e. when a Latina women is professionally successful—these stereotypes still follow her and limit her upward mobility, because the vision of those in power is clouded by the idea of Latina women as hypersexual and uneducated, even when that is not the reality.
Themes
Even Judith, who has multiple diplomas, is sometimes assumed to be a culinary or service worker. She recalls an incident at her first public poetry reading at a restaurant in Miami, where an older woman called Judith to her table thinking she was a waitress—Judith, for her part, thought the woman wanted her to sign a copy of her book. Judith remembers that interaction more clearly than all the highlights of the event because it reminds her of the hurdles she has had to overcome to be taken seriously. She recalls that her fury at the woman impassioned her reading, and that her ability to appeal to and impress an audience that did not recognize her experiences made her proud. She references a poem she wrote, which she calls a “prayer for communication, and for respect.”
Judith has experienced such instances of being subjected to the “myth” of the Latin woman despite the fact that she has defied the “myth” in many ways throughout her life. However, as she suggests here, overcoming such adversity has profoundly impacted her writing for the better. In fact, the experience of moving and existing between cultures inspires much of her writing, which concerns themes of translation and the universality of human experience.
Themes
