Introduction: On the Treachery and Emancipatory Power of Chicana Iconographies

This book examines the iconography of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a force for social justice and feminist emancipation in Chicana literature and visual arts from 1975 to 2010. Sacred Iconographiesexplores the role of the Virgin as a religious and cultural icon that enables writers and artists to negotiate new social relations through spiritual mestizaje.It analyzes the emancipated selves that Chicanas produce at the juncture of transnational capitalism, colonial expansion, and globalization and tracks their strategies for empowerment through feminist coalitions, literature, and art. Hence, this work documents how Chicanas build a borderlands methodologythat makes liberation possible and how they defy Western understandings of identity and binaries such as first/third world, global north/ south. Although it describes the impact of Chicana iconographies on conceptualizing social location and subjectivity, Sacred Iconographiesboth draws from, and further contributes to, the larger discussion concerning not only Chicana studies specifically, but also, more generally, the experience of women of color in the United States and abroad.