Aloof to Motherhood: A Chicana Experience (The Good Mexican American Daughter Book 2)

Using my dissertation to contextualize the research, like The Last Good Daughter Book 1 of The Good Mexican American Daughter series, Aloof to Motherhood sprung out of the pages in my research study. Mothers are so many things, but in our racist non-inclusive environments they can be made into stereotypical generalizations that do not fulfill the true to life roles mothers play in today's Mexican American families.A Mexican mother can be described as the matriarch, big hearted, loving, submissive, a great cook and likely modeled after the Virgen de Guadalupe. The mother in the family is the caretaker, the head on the swivel, and the official decision maker who sits on her husband’s shoulder whispering in his ear. She is a Mexican mother on the Texas Mexico border living and surviving it. My mother was a direct contradiction to all this. She was aloof to motherhood.The word aloof is defined as someone who is standoffish, detached, indifferent, and even cold. A mother, a Mexican mother, is not supposed to be anything like this. She is supposed to be the opposite of all this in a perfectly socialized and generalized Mexican American world.Building on the research and my experiences with motherhood, I tell a story of how motherhood affects Mexican American girls and women negatively and positively. First I start by defining motherhood within my Mexican American cultural context, recognizing motherhood in all of my surroundings, writing about my perception of my mother’s aloofness to me, and lastly, I identify my non-traditional motherhood. The cultural capital wealth identified through life experiences is as valuable as customs and traditions. Being open to experiences is the life saving mechanism that changed everything in my life that made me not aloof to motherhood and gave me this book. This is a Chicana experience and perspective written through my Mexican American Chicana feminist lens. Read more