Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Brief Article

"I am a brown woman, from the Mexican side of town," begins this powerful collection of essays on Chicana feminism, or "Xicanisma," as Castillo calls it. She sets out to denounce the stereotypes, discrimination, and exploitation that Chicanas face.

"At an early age we learn that our race is undesirable," she writes, noting that Chicanos are not first-class citizens in Mexico, and certainly not first-class citizens in the United States. "We have been marginalized in every sense of the word by U.S. society."

Chicanas are women without a country, she says. Castillo feels more kinship with other Third World women than with middle-class white feminists in the United States, and her criticism of mainstream white feminism shows again that the questions of race and class still roil the women's liberation movement.

Castillo tries to reinterpret and reclaim "behavior long seen as inherent in Mexic Amerindian woman's character, such as patience, preseverance, industriousness, loyalty to one's clan, and commitment to...