María Speaks

Book excerpt: De la Garza weaves a powerful examination of the complex processes that work together to constrain self-expression in a woman of Mexican ancestry. The book demonstrates the use of a variety of creative and reflexive methodologies, including poetry, prayers, de/reconstructed narratives, autobiography, and letters to historical and cultural female archetypes of Mexican origin. This methodology of «art as meditation», for obtaining insight into the dynamics of culture, is used to produce an autoethnographic study of how one can reclaim voice through rigorous interrogation of our own lives as cultural texts. De la Garza offers us a template for a new methodology, as applicable in academic studies of culture as it is in the everyday lives of those seeking to find voice within silenced cultural domains.