The Birth of the Chicana

In 1959, the Vietnam War severed to prove that not only had the Mexican American generation had failed to accomplish equality for Mexicans, but also failed to get the Anglos to view the actions in 1836 as an injustice as they began to parallel the expansion in their takeover of the Vietnamese. As a result of this failure, a new generation of Mexican activists, Chicanos, decided to take a new approach towards striving for equality; one that was based on achieving political justice for their own unique culture hoping Anglos would be forced to recognize their equal citizenship and that of other minorities. Yet despite these noble implications, many insisted that the fight for racial equality took precedence over that of gender. Thus, feeling wronged Mexican women began their form of activist pride and named themselves Chicanas. One such Chicana was Bernice Zamora, who ruthlessly critiqued the Chicano movement in her poem “Notes from a Chicana Co-ed” as unjust form of sexism that would ultimately hinder the any effort towards racial equality in the future, and as such women should push f...