Dissident Lived Spirituality: Brujas and Curanderas in So Far From God

• In Event: Political Prowess in Ana Castillo’s Chicanx Literature of Dissent

Abstract

Ana Castillo’s So Far From God enacts a process of constructing oppositional pedagogies that allow for an examination of two important figures within Xican@ cultural practices: the bruja and the curandera. In this essay, I examine how Castillo’s rendering of the bruja and curandera invites her reader to unlearn the epistemologies that favor Western concepts of “healing” and “the body” by complicating notions of heteronormativity, whiteness, and racial capitalism. In this sense, Castillo’s critique encompasses a healing of the Xican@ collective memory body politic that has been subjected to conquest and colonization by two empires—the Spanish and the U.S. In traditional literary works, these two archetypes are typically oppositional to one another; signifying good and evil, as well as subject outcasts who live in the margins. However, I propose that Castillo provides a dissident perspective by reimaging the spiritual roles the bruja and the curandera serve. For Castillo the bruja is a spiritual healer or psychic who sees beyond the here and now what she describes in Massacre of the Dreamers as “an individual (whose dreams seemed to prophesize occurrences)…with a privileged position in society” (16). The curandera is a specialized healer learned in the knowledge of healing the body and who relies on traditional medicine of Xican@ ancestors—the Mexic Amerindian—for its curative power. In So Far From God, the characters Caridad and La Loca embody the roles of the bruja and curandera--a decisive move by Castillo that demonstrates the indispensable spirituality praxis within Xican@ communities. Castillo’s Caridad and La Loca embody their power on multiple levels as gendered subjects, as healers and spiritual guides as examples of how to unlearn epistemologies that favor Western notions of “healing.” In Jacqueline Alexander’s words, “it is the ways in which knowledge comes to be embodied and made manifest through flesh, an embodiment of Spirit” (15) that allows for individual and collective healing to make the world intelligible.

Author

• Norma A Valenzuela, New Mexico Highlands University