Review: Las Hijas de Juan: Daughters Betrayed, by Josie Méndez-Negrete

Ethnic Studies emerged as an academic discipline in the late 1960s during the epoch of protest to challenge ideologies of racialized social class deeply normalized within Eurocentric knowledge that had historically depicted oppressed minoritized groups from an inferior perspective within the history of the United States. Chicana/o Studies would be one of the original four pillars of the discipline that furthered the epistemologies of Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) perspectives at the forefront of a knowledge base that represented a counter-narrative to the lived experiences of such communities from their standpoint.In Las Hijas de Juan: Daughters Betrayed, Dr. Josie Méndez-Negrete utilizes autoethnography within a sociocultural context as a tool for describing her family’s survival. She incorporates mind as a methodology, as she relives her early experiences through a theory in the flesh (see Roediger III and Wertsch’s “Creating a New Discipline of Memory Studies”). Such theoretical positionality conceptualizes the body as the material site being a Chicana woman of color. Thus, serving as a foundation for intellectual knowledge rooted in the politics of resistance and liberation (as discussed by Cervantes-Soon in “The US-Mexico Border-Crossing Chicana Researcher”). Seldom in Mexican culture are those who are willing to shatter traumatic realities of sexual victimization, physical, mental, and emotional abuse that occur within the nuclear familia. Some previous critical strands in respect to Chicana/o autobiographies where such community speaks their truth as they lived them includes Maria, Daughter of Immigrants, by María Antonietta Berriozábal (2012); Always Running La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. (1993) and It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addictions, Revolutions and Healing (2012) by Luis J. Rodreguez; and Street Life: Poverty, Gangs, and a Ph.D. by Victor M. Rios (2011). Such body of literature is centered on the Chicana/o struggle against intersectionalities of injustice that has provided future generations tools to draw upon in critically understanding oppression, thus seeking liberation through inspiration from those whom have struggled with a courage of consciousness in the spirit of social justice for the common good.For some, such treatment becomes normalized and accepted as an unfortunate experience along the journey of life. By utilizing testimonio in its most provocative form, Méndez-Negrete erases boundaries from Mexican post-colonial patriarchal culture in confronting the stigma of “el que diran.” The author organizes the book into seven sections with multiple short reads within each section to share the painful reality of a family enduring a violent patriarch.In “Prologue: Sin Padre,” Méndez-Negrete reflects on her father never having love for her, she was the child that he did not want. “Juan wanted to show us what it was like to feed us, but it wasn’t the fact that he had to support us that fed his ire, he was angry because we were girls. He needed boys to work with him” (2). In “Mexíco Lindo y Querido/Dearest and Beloved Mexico,” Méndez-Negrete relives her early years in “El Pueblo de Tabasco Zacatecas, Mexico.” Méndez-Negrete critically recalls stereotypes ascribed in her community to the people of the Huichol indigenous tribe. She recalled the shoes they wore, the traditional huarache. She also looked back at how the community was taught to depict the Huichol people as robachicos or child abductors. The author critically explains how the fear of the Other serves as a testimonio to the legacy that Spanish colonization left deeply imbedded in Mexico. This recalls Emily Keightly’s work “Remembering Research,” which suggests that remembering is not solely an articulation of individual psychologies, but a performance deeply rooted in lived contexts of collective memory.Méndez-Negrete also writes of the strength she would inherit from her beloved Tias, Herme and Chenda. She symbolically named them saints and revolutionaries. According to Méndez-Negrete they were “saints” because they survived through a life under difficult circumstances on a daily basis. Méndez-Negrete shares one cuento of how her Tias both lost their husbands when struck by lightning. Both of these women had married hombres del campo-rancheros (men that work out in the fields of agriculture tending to crops or to cattle). When their husbands perished, her aunts would take upon the difficult life of tending to the duties that men would traditionally do. Méndez-Negrete pulls this memory together through a song they both loved: “De piedra ha de ser la cama De piedra la cabecera La mujer que a mi me quiera me ha de querer de a deveras Ay, ay Corazon, por que no amas (Longing. They lived. Suffering. They overcame. Surrendering they gave us love)” (32). The harnessing of knowledge to survive and overcome came from observing the perseverance of strong influential women in her life. Here Méndez-Negrete points to the unconditional love of her tias, which would plant seeds of resilience and self-determination.“Estas chingadas Viejas tan solo sirven para parir hijas. (Damned hags, only good for birthing girls)” (83). Méndez-Negrete recalls a string of forgotten abuses by her father. She describes painful memories of having installed latches in their bedroom to keep her father out of their bedroom at night. In “Epilogue: Purging the Skeletons, Bone by Bone,” Méndez-Negrete concludes by imparting the message that she did not consciously set out to expose evil manipulation, or decadence of power, and depravity of male control over powerless women and girls. She argues that with the book she seeks to reveal the social power vested by a society that sanctions and ignores men’s violence against women and children. At some point, Méndez-Negrete uses the text to question herself as to why she wrote the book and yet walks us through her lived experience using writing as a tool for coming to terms with the violence experienced by her family, as well as for her social work aimed at preventing the abuse of the most vulnerable in society. She is a realista about healing through the process of writing and relocating wounds to where they belong. Through her writing she finds words of consolidation to smooth pain, heal, and to reclaim her lived experiences.Las Hijas de Juan: Daughters Betrayed serves as a culturally relevant therapeutic tool in the healing of traumatic instances that have been normalized as rules and ascribed behaviors within Mexican patriarchal cultures where el que diran, or a stigma of shame, prevents and inculcates abuses deriving from incest and sexual abuse. This book is not limited to Mexican culture, or to Latina/o cultures, but addresses the potential harms that can find space within collective cultures that share and intergenerationally reproduce such ascribed patriarchal norms. Dr. Méndez-Negrete’s autoethnography serves as a catalyst for confrontation in shattering such silences. As suggested by Chicana feminist scholars such as Aida Hurtado (“Theory in the Flesh: Toward an Endarkened Epistemology”), a just society requires making a home that portrays the holistic human experience and considers all human activity. Such frameworks suggest that ignoring the spirit leads to illness both physical and psychological. This book is a contribution in challenging traditional colonial methodologies in academic research and incorporating Chicana feminist methodologies within academia, even when they present the hard truths of resilience, self-determination, dignity, and the spirit of being a mujerista.