The Post-Marianismo Moment: The Feminist Negotiations of Rhina Espaillat

• In Event: The Poetic Legacy and Radically Inclusive Vision of Rhina P. Espaillat

Abstract

Professor Nancy Kang's paper seeks to excavate Rhina Espaillat’s nuanced use of the biblical creation story from Genesis to go beyond the ideologies of subservience and passivity epitomized by the biblically-driven ideology of Marianismo. This gender paradigm argues that Hispanic women should be as the Virgin Mary and avoid creating gender chaos by deviating from their socially assigned roles as mothers and wives. As African American orator Sojourner Truth stated in one version of her Akron, Ohio women’s rights speech of 1851, “If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down, all ‘lone,” then surely her sistren should also be able to turn it right-side up again (Truth 2004: 1194). Truth’s exhortation and allusion to Eve meant for the empowered males, namely clergy and abolitionists, to let women mobilize in the service of personal improvement and collective good. Making way for others’ greatness is an act far more virtuous and inclusive than criticizing an underserved group for their supposed deficiencies. Espaillat does not go so far as to rewrite the creation story; she does, however, add depth and a resistant reading to Eve’s construction as a foolish woman guilty of humanity’s fall. Instead of focusing on the sinner, Espaillat inquires, what were the circumstances of the sin? This paper examines Espaillat's unique form of theoretical inquiry from the perspective of woman-of-color feminism.

Author

• Nancy Kang, University of Manitoba