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Torn Between Two Mothers: Indigenous Women As Spiritual Mentors In Two Novels By Mexican Women Writers, Elena Sánchez Mora

Hispanic Studies Faculty Publications

In many novels by contemporary Hispanic women writers, the estrangement between mother and daughter seems to be a constant underlying theme. There are several examples of texts in which distancing between mother and daughter renders the role of the mother ineffective, prompting the daughter to search for an alternative maternal figure.

Within Mexican narrative, I have come upon four novels with protagonists who experience this predicament, but in which all the countervailing figures are indigenous women who are servants in the middle class white households inhabited by the young female characters. For this article, I have chosen only two of …