Discussion Leading; Essay Abstract

Schuyler Kerby
WST 3015
Nina Perez
21 February 2010

Cisneros, Sandra. "Guadalupe the Sex Goddess". Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th Ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2009. 164-167.

“Guadalupe the Sex Goddess” is a life narrative that reveals one Mexican-American woman's issues with sexuality. The narrative progresses from her experiences with the sexuality of the other (young white women in the high school locker room), to the physical discover of her sex, and to the acceptance of that sex and her sexuality. This embodiment in the text is paired with Cisneros's critical analysis of the Virgin of Guadalupe (165). She examines her sexuality and that of young Latina girls through the context provided by her intertwined religion and culture.

Cisneros examines the intersectionality that she experiences. As a Mexican, her religion is prominent in her culture. As a young girl living in a crowded home, she did not have privacy. The first affects how sexuality is treated within her culture, and the second shows how she was unable to explore her own body. Culture and religion created “that blur, a vagueness about what went on 'down there'” (165). This forced her to learn about her sex and sexuality through clinical settings, through that of the speculum and not her mother (165). Her family was not able to explain to her how her body worked, and she was not able to discover it on her own (165).

The lack of knowledge created a lack of confidence and security. She describes an experience with an man that led to contraceptive-less sex. She felt “too afraid to sound stupid, afraid to ask him to take responsibility too”, and this caused her emotional turmoil as she waited for her period (165). This lack of knowledge is not exclusive to her situation, and it is this silence concerning Latinas and their bodies that catalyzed her to write (165). Cisneros also recognizes an issue that needs to be address along with that silence and guilt that plagues young women, “a yearning to be loved” (165). These factors, she concludes, present a contradiction. Young Latina women are told to not become pregnant, but “no one tells them how not to” (165). This “culture of denial” leads to her angry to the image of la Virgen de Guadalupe. By presenting young Latina women the Virgin Mary as their cultural role model, while simultaneously not providing Jesus as the model for boys, a dangerous, unrealistic ideal is established that forces these women to have two options—motherhood or putahood (165-166).

As Cisneros discovered sex, she employed this “incredible energy” in order to reexamine the image of la Virgen de Guadalupe. She became a sex goddess, an icon that was a re-manifestation of the old goddesses of fertility, sexual passion, and maternity that were removed from her culture when her ancestors were Catholicized in 1531 (166). This figure, a culmination of old cultural figures; Buddhist writings; and traumatic life events, becomes Cisneros's God. This causes religious conversion in her, where she now believes in God. Her Virgin de Guadalupe allowed her to understand God, and to understand how she was blessed in her womanhood, her sex, and her sexuality.