The Chicana Narrator as Healer: Reconciliation in Ana Castillo’s So Far From God

Abstract

This article argues that the narrator of Ana Castillo’s So Far From God is a postmodernist ontological narrator whose project is to heal the Chicana mestizaje’s identity through storytelling. Through the privileging of the female identity, returning to oral history and uncovering of subjugated Native American female origin myths, the narrator attempts to reconstruct the female identity. Although the narrator is not fully characterised, unlike other female protagonists in the novel, this essay aims to explore how the narrator is one of the female figures in the novel, and similarly, how she attempts not only to bring about the displacement of the male figure and reposition of the female, but also acts as a healer for her community.

Keywords

• female identity
• healer
• oral history
• origin myths
• storytelling

References

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