Voz y Vision/Voice and Vision: Catharsis and Conviction in Latina Literature

“Voz y Vision/Voice and Vision: Catharsis and Conviction in Latina Literature” was a research paper that I wrote for my senior Humanities project while attending Lubbock Christian University. The goal of the paper was show how Latina authors, first based on Mexican American women, use their literature, mainly fiction, to discover their identity. While writing this research paper I found that many women of different ethnic backgrounds have similar feelings, experiences, and desires. The paper then turned into a project that incorporated several genres of Latina writing, as well as Latina authors with different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, while exploring these women’s purpose for writing, including finding their identity and self-worth. These works allowed the writer many outlets, which includes the escape from everyday problems faced by women to expressing their beliefs and voices about injustices of the world. Women authors have been using writing as an outlet for generations; however this paper only provides a glimpse of a few Latina authors and examples of their works and writing styles. Some of the authors included in this paper are Julia Alvarez, Gloria Anzaldua, and Sandra Cisneros, among others. I also believe that Latina authors’ works, if read, can help others by allowing readers to associate themselves with the characters within the story, poem, or novel. The readers can feel that they are not the only ones that have gone through such ordeals. I proposed that writing allows Latina women, as well as other women, to find a way to not only express themselves creatively, but to also alleviate pain and sadness, inform people, imagine, hope and empower others – a sort of therapy.