The autobiographical project of Soveida Dosamantes in Face of an angel, by Denise Chávez

Abstract

The present dissertation aims to investigate the collective hue of Face of an angel, a fictional autobiography by Mexican American writer Denise Chávez. Therefore, this research intends to discuss the Chicano society described under the lens of its narrator/protagonist, Soveida Dosamantes, investigating it since the historical process it resulted from, moving to the iniquity between men s and women s roles, and finally reaching the self-referential discourse with which the narrator/protagonist represents the cultural environment she is inserted in. Before the narrative itself, the reader is presented to the narrator/protagonist s genealogic tree, signaling that what is going to develop throughout the novel is a family saga. Thus, Soveida Dosamantes makes use of her domestic ambience and also the community of the fictional town of Agua Oscura, her homeland, as the cutout of a major social framework. Employing autobiographical discourse, the narrator/protagonist created by Denise Chávez exposes the ills of a community that, as a product of colonialism and neocolonialism, has lost its cultural identity. In Face of an Angel, by means of the narrator/protagonist s first person account, Denise Chávez reproduces the ethos she was born and grew up in. Endowing Soveida Dosamantes with autobiographical components such as complicated family relations, native women characters who work as gatekeepers of ancestral practices erased by European domination, as well as men characters who mask frailty underneath the appearance of strength and power, Chávez represents in Face of an angel a microcosm of a group which little by little has been subverting the official discourse and gaining terrain in the U.S. political and social panorama