Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1999
Abstract
Denise Chavez's skillful and evocative Face of an Angel (1994) examines the inequitable and discomfiting, yet somehow powerful, place of women in New Mexico border culture.! Their lives are mainly devoted to the hard work of serving others, and Chavez connects the past and present of the women of the area through the life story of the main character Soveida Dosamantes (born in 1948). Much of what makes up Soveida's present, everyday existence has its origins over the border in Old Mexico, and the established customs and traditions have a great deal of impact upon Soveida and her family in their lives in Agua Oscura (importantly, "dark water"). Although they are American citizens, the fact of their ancestors' immigration and their own cultural separateness makes them in a sense reminiscent of the statement made by Wallace Stevens about poets: "[They] are never of the world in which they live," for they do not seem fundamentally linked to the United States at large. Denise Chavez has mentioned that her characters represent la Lucha, or the struggle that Mexican Americans have to live through in order to survive. This is likely why they do not feel a part of the major culture.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 19:4 (Fall 1999). Copyright © 1999 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.