The Myth Of The Latin Woman Summary

Judith Ortiz-Cofer opens her telling of “The Myth of the Latin Woman” with a powerful anecdote of her experience of being sung to on a bus, contextualized through the gendered and cultured lens via which she sees the world. Delving deeper into the awkwardness of being serenated by a complete stranger, Ortiz-Cofer uses this experience and others to draw connections between her life and how she experiences the intersection of her gender and ethnoracial identity. Briefly summarizing cultural, racial, and historic layers of stereotypes, the author illuminates the complexities of how hegemonic masculine and colonial racism impact her and Latinas everywhere on a regular basis. As such, she explains the manner in which she has been sexually racialized all of her life through the use of her experiences as a Puerto Rican woman.

Racialization, as described by Omi and Winant, is the assignment of “racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice or group” (Omi & Winant 1986). While Ortiz-Cofer

Ortiz-Cofer references the “Hot Tamale” trope as something directly assigned to Latina women. By comparing women to food, they are dehumanized, objectified, and used to perpetuate cultural and ethnic stereotypes. Using words like “sizzling,” “smoldering,” and “ripen” – only further tie the hypersexual stereotype to the Latina woman as an aspect of culture and ethnicity – like the food. These assumptions about gendered cultural difference stem from images still rooted in a colonial mindset. The majority of the micro and macroaggressions that the author speaks about are perpetuated by white men, or representative of the ideologies of white men. These white men see themselves as culturally competent because they have watched a TV show with a Latina and ignore the full impacts that their ancestors had on the people they