Against Patriarchy: Self-labelling as a Subversive Tool in Sandra Cisneros’ Poetry

Meifan Jiang

doi:10.61187/ts.v4i1.283

Authors

Meifan Jiang
aspirant@163.com
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

Keywords:

Derogatory self-labelling, Patriarchy, Narrators, Chicana, Sandra Cisneros

Abstract

The poetry of Mexican-American writer and poet Sandra Cisneros portrays female images that subvert patriarchal norms and is thus often regarded as rebellious and feminist. This paper explores select narrators in Cisneros’ poems, who embody three types of women that defy patriarchal ideologies based on analysis of the derogatory self-labelling adopted by these narrators in her poems “Night Madness Poem”, “Loose Woman”, “The Heart Rounds Up the Usual Suspects”, “Extreme Unction”, “Love Poem #1”, and “You Bring Out the Mexican in Me”. By exploring the archetypes of these three types of narrators and analysing the narrators’ processes of self-conception, this paper investigates the construction of narrators’ self-labelling and elucidates how self-labelling can function as a potent tool against patriarchy.

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