Life is Bitch 2

LIFE IS BITCH Seite 2

Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie an der Geisteswissenschatlichen Fakultät der Karl Franzens Universität Graz am Institut für Amerikanistik
Begutachter: AO. UNIV.PROF. DR. ROBERTA MAIERHOFER, Graz 2008
Mag. Sarah Marisa Gruber

2.2.3 Motherhood

No choice has a more profound impact on a woman’s life than her decision whether or not to become a mother. Bound up with sexuality and gender identity, choices about childbearing and motherhood are emotionally gripping and socially pivotal. They affect one’s attitude towards oneself - self-esteem may be enhanced, or it may suffer.

(Tietjens Meyers 2001: 735).

In the above quote Meyers underlines the importance of motherhood as a matter of choice and its importance for one’s understanding of ´self `. However, motherhood is not always an identity one can willfully take on or neglect.

In Random Family, motherhood is something that is almost inseparable from sex. This might seem a cool expression when considering definitions in which motherhood is perceived “as women’s highest calling” or when thinking about definitions of women equaling mothers.

In The Awakening (1899), by Kate Chopin, a myth was outspelled that has, from that point on, held a special place in the gender symbolism of white Americans; the myth of the “mother-woman”:
Fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels (Chopin 1993: 8).

The myth of maternal love - by that we really mean the socio-cultural norms and values expected to be observed by women/mothers- is still very powerful, in comparison to other myths; and the more traditional the society, the more powerful is this myth. Women still have relatively less “psychological freedom” (cf. Monajem 2001). From this perspective, women’s activities should be confined to the care of children, the nurturing of a husband, and the maintenance of a household. By managing this separate domestic sphere, women gain social influence through their roles as mothers, transmitters of culture, and parents for the next generation. For traditionalists, differentiating between the experience of motherhood as a natural and satisfying additional identity and motherhood as an institution central in reproducing gender inequality has proved difficult (cf. Gergen, Davis 1996: 142). There can be little doubt about the existence of a “semi--love’ between parents and children, since whenever one cares for something, spends time with it - no matter if this happens willingly or under some kind of obligation - affection starts to grow between them. To say the least, one gets “used” to the object of one’s concern and care.

In her essay “The Milk of Human Kindness”, Billy Gragg states that advocators of birth control in the 1970s did more than argue for sex education and legalized contraception: they also insisted that women should pursue their own self-interest because voluntary – rather than mandatory – motherhood was better for everyone (Bragg in Folbre 2001: 14).

When sex equals pregnancy, then woman equals mother and no authentic choices can be made; and we are trapped in a similar dilemma like Edna Pontillier, the protagonist from The Awakening, a century ago:

She was fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart, she would sometimes forget them. [Their absence] seemed to free her from a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her (Chopin 1993: 18).

Then women in the 21st century are still “blindly assuming” maternity; and never have had the chance to give more meaning to the word mother than referring to a biological state of being. Love for one’s children should be something exclusive, and not imply an altogether altruistic nature of woman.

As stated in the introduction, identity is something fluid, something that “happens over time” (Hall in Pinderhughes 1997: 15): Motherhood can be a part of a woman’s identity, but only if she has the choice to attach it and is not under the imperative of an affluent society that feeds her images of how and who a woman is supposed to be.

Against all mythical belief that famous instinctive love and maternal behavior is not instantly switched on: one does not necessarily ´know` how to treat this object of one’s affection, care, concern and habit, what is ´good` for it, what should be done for its well-being and prosperity, how to express one’s affection, care and concern for it. It is here that instructions, training, and guidance are necessary (cf. Monajem 2001). The psycho-mental state of a pregnant woman is largely determined by her state before pregnancy, and not miraculously changes as soon as she perceives. Guidance and Instructions usually happen through one’s own mother, the books one reads, or one’s friends. Also, one’s own experience can be drawn on. In Random Family, no such psychological tutoring happens; when Jessica neglects her daughters she excuses herself by saying: “I did just what my mother did to me” (Random Family 2003: 52-53). Lourdes has had similar experiences of neglect herself: “Her mother wanted her first-born to be a son and she used to joke with friends that she’d found Lourdes in a garbage can” (Random Family 2003: 98). A vicious circle of ignorance and neglect is pervasive in Random Family. Biological mothers do not equal caregivers, or psychological anchors.

Next, the meaning of the word mother and the significance of children for the Random Family women will be analyzed, focusing on Coco and Jessica as representative for the novel. Generally, pregnancies are seen as something very positive in Random Family:

You could hate a rival all you wanted to, but pregnancy merited respect. There were girls so hard that they paid no mind to a belly, but Coco wasn’t one of them. After all, the unborn baby was innocent. If you cursed a pregnant girl, and something bad happened to the baby, you could be cursed the rest of your natural life (Random Family 2003: 116).

Babies had a way of bringing out the best in people, of softening hardness, of gluing broken things (Random Family 2003: 199).

Babies were about hoping and growing, not just surviving. They pulled you into the future, even if you were literally imprisoned by the past. Any belly inside or outside of prison – required at least the perfunctory gestures of optimism (Random Family 2003: 234). Children are given symbolic meaning of change and salvation. The symbolic meaning, as well as cultural norms, might be the reason that contraception is never explicitly considered an alternative to teen pregnancies.

None of Jessica’s pregnancies was planned. She gives birth to Serena Josephine at age 16 after making out with a stranger during a party: “One thing led to another and next thing you know, Jessica and Puma were kissing on top of a pile of coats. [...] Both girls came out pregnant (Random Family 2003: 6). Not even a year later she is pregnant by another boy, called Willy, who is actually willing to admit that he is the father: “Willy may have lacked Puma’s lightning energy, but that September he quickly agreed to put his last name on the birth certificates: Brittany arrived at 5:01 p.m, several weeks early and two minutes ahead of her twin sister, Stephanie” (Random Family 2003: 11). In imprisonment, she seduces a ward and conceives twins again: “Jessica gave birth to two baby boys in a local hospital near the prison,” (Random Family 2003: 236) Michael and Matthew.

Early on in the novel she shares her dreams about a family: “The only dream I’ve ever had was being married, being committed to one man, living in a little house with a fence and little, you know, playground in the back, and a lotta kids” (Random Family 2003: 52).

Although Jessica is the biological mother of five children, she does not fulfill the role as a caretaker for any of them:

It was understood that Lourdes would have to raise Little Star; Jessica didn’t have the patience (Random Family 2003: 6).

When Jessica retreated to Lourdes a few days later, Milagros offered to keep the twins (Random Family 2003: 13).

Lourdes promised to help raise the babies, [Michael and Matthew] but the burden fell to Elaine. [...] she also couldn’t live with the thought of her nephews in foster care (Random Family 2003: 236-237).

Jessica’s children are not the ´materialization` of a couple’s love for each other. Her pregnancies are not chosen, neither by the father nor herself. Nevertheless, she uses them as a way to “stabilize” love that has initially not been there:

In the early spring of 1989, George installed Jessica in his mother’s old apartment on Morris Avenue. [...] Not long before, she had ordered Milagros to bring her the twins. Now she finally had a home; she even had a brother-in-law, if not quite a husband. She was ready to act like a mother and wife (Random Family 2003: 70).

Jessica is ready to act like a mother; her main impetus for having a child- other than the natural instinct of survival of the race -is to give a sense of security to the relationship with George.

In contrast to Jessica, Milagros feels genuine love for the twins:

Milagros was distressed about losing the twins; she had taken care of Brittany and Stephanie for the last two years. [...] Milagros comforted herself with the thought that the arrangement would never last. In the meantime she had inherited Kevin, the little boy she and her mother used to watch. Kevin’s own mother had been arrested, and the BCW, the Bureau of Child Welfare, had come for him; he was headed for foster care unless Milagros took him in (Random Family 2003: 70).

The presence of a genuine love between a couple will help to produce the favorable condition for the emergence of a truly loving relationship between parents and their future child. Nevertheless, the choice to attach motherhood as an additional identity can also be made by a single mother. Also in the case of the single mother, genuine motherhood emphasizes protection, trying to shield children as long as possible from the penalties attached to their race, class, or their gender status – to isolate it from the dangers of the larger world (cf. Gergen, Davis 1996: 145). Otherwise only a semi--love will be formed.

During her imprisonment, jail proves to be a place of reflection and fruitful distance from the randomness of circumstances in Jessica’s community. In jail, Jessica has the time to reflect on her neglect:

As Jessica progressed through DAP , her abandonment of Serena increasingly haunted her. She worried less about the twin girls – they belonged to Milagros – and she admitted that she felt little connection to the baby boys. But the bond with her oldest daughter stayed strong (Random Family 2003:300).

When released she tries to reestablish the bond between with her daughters and finally files for custody of Serena:

She invited her daughters to come to the city and share the vacation with her. The twins weren’t as eager to spend time with her as they had been when they were younger, but Serena seemed excited, and Jessica wanted to act like a mother, even though she wasn’t entirely sure how (Random Family 2003: 346).

Jessica still wanted to be a mother. When she filed for full custody of Serena, Milagros didn’t contest the application. She believed that Serena would be safe with Jessica, and she was exhausted by the months of battling – with Serena in person, and with Jessica by telephone. Milagros still had Brittany, Stephanie, Matthew, and Michael to rise, and now – on alternate weekends – Baby Kevin (Random Family 2003: 361).

The question of how to be a mother leads back to the definition of the word mother:

Many roles have been attributed to and entangled with motherhood, but living in the era of specialization and expertise, a mother does not need to be a nurse. Similarly, she is not a teacher, a guide, a coach, counselor, pedagogue, or mentor – so there would be no special skills necessary for Jessica to fulfill her motherly duties. First and foremost, in the very act of giving birth, she has manifested her status as biological mother; secondly, mother’s love is still the nearest to the unconditional love, now regarded as the most important element for the healthy growth of children. But since she has not invested time to form an intimate relationship with any of her children, - which would have been possible before her arrest,- the degree and the strength of the correlation between her self-identification and the mother-image is mainly shaped by the degree and the extent of her childhood and adolescent fantasies in this regard. Jessica ´loves` her children mainly because the myth of maternal love overpowers her, because the socio-cultural rules and norms expect her to do so, and because her sense of missed responsibility and commitment, oblige her to take care of at least one child. Thus the definition of mother can be limited to a person who gives life and that is all she is there for - at least in Jessica’s case.

Jessica’s failure to understand and to give meaning to the word mother may be rooted partly in her own cool upbringing. Violence as a powerful component in her childhood has already been analyzed. As a next point, the effect of missing agentic choice by Lourdes will be added:

Lourdes had once wanted to become a singer. She liked to tell whoever would listen that she was so talented as a girl that an agent invited her to join a touring singing group. Her mother had refused to let her go. The details of the story varied – [...] but the theme remained: Lourdes yearning for freedom, her mother destroying her dreams. Her mother wanted her first-born to be a son and she used to joke with friends that she’d found Lourdes in a garbage can. Lourdes explained her lot largely as the result of spite: “If I couldn’t be what I wanted, I wasn’t gonna be nothing. And if I couldn’t do what I wanted, I wasn’t gonna do nothing” (Random Family 2003: 98)

Lourdes characterizes her own life as failure; she perceives herself to have become “nothing”. Motherhood and maternity do not provide her with an additional identity; she in fact resents this part of herself:

When the guard asked her, what’s your relationship to the inmate?” Lourdes whispered, “Mother” – a word she usually proclaimed (Random Family 2003: 159).

Lourdes wasn’t the mothering kind either – in fact she wished she’d never had children – but circumstance had eroded her active resistance to the role. She’d been raising children since she was six (Random Family 2003: 6).

The expression “her active resistance” was eroded by circumstances lets the reader know that there is basically no correlation between Lourdes’ self-identification and the mother-image. She does conform to the traditional role in so far as she physically takes care of her offspring, but she does not provide psychological nurturing: “Lourdes chided Jessica’s ambition and, like Lourdes, Jessica had resented it” (Random Family 2003: 98). Being deprived of the authentic choice to become a mother, there is no intensity in her affection. The power of the mother myth and other aspects of maternal love such as the very process of conceiving, birth-giving, breast feeding, and upbringing have formed an inevitable intimate relation between mother and child, but it has not helped her to fall in love and stay in love with her children:

Shortly after the boys were born, Lourdes finally appeared at Danbury. Jessica was not initially welcoming. Although Jessica had been in prison for four years, Lourdes had visited only twice. Jessica was tired of her mother’s excuses. [...] Lourdes later said she couldn’t emotionally handle the lengthy visits. Jessica thought she didn’t want to be away from her block for too long, which was a round-about criticism of Lourdes dependency on men and drugs; Lourdes insisted there was no dependency.

Mockery was Jessica’s way of reestablishing her connection with her mother; their wounded repartee kept a safe distance and neutralized the tension that always sat between them. Jessica spoke harshly to Lourdes, but she craved her attention and love (Random Family 2003: 237).

Jessica longs for and tries to establish a connection of intimacy, in order to be able to finally come to terms with her own identity:

Jessica mined her own adolescence for clues. She’d cut herself to relieve anguish, scratching the thin flesh of her underarms and comb marks on her inner thighs. As a woman, Jessica preferred somebody else’s blood. “I’m getting so fucking fed up, I don’t care who has to pay, and whoever has anything to do with this is gonna pay, every tear shed,” she said. “I try to tell myself, ´Forgive, forgive, forgive, ` but my heart’s filling up with revenge (Random Family 2003: 262).

The question of how to be a mother leads back to the definition of the word mother:

essica’s failure to understand and to give meaning to the word mother may be rooted partly in her own cool upbringing. Violence as a powerful component in her childhood has already been analyzed. As a next point, the effect of missing agentic choice by Lourdes will be added:

When the guard asked her, what’s your relationship to the inmate?” Lourdes whispered, “Mother” – a word she usually proclaimed (Random Family 2003: 159).

In Roberta Maierhofer´s Salty Old Women, Nancy Chodorow says that “der erste Schritt der weiblichen Individualisierung ist die Wahrnehmung der Grenzen des Ichs im Bezug zur Mutter“ (Maierhofer 2002: 207):

[…] die Akzeptanz des Andersseins der Mutter führt zu einer Anerkennung nicht nur des „eigenen“, sondern auch des „anderen“ Ichs und ermöglicht eine Begegnung zweier Individuen, die erkennen, dass in der Beziehung zum andern ihre Identität begründet ist.

In der feministischen Forschung wird die Mutter-Tochter Beziehung in der Ambivalenz von Annäherung und Ablehnung behandelt. Feministinnen haben in der Auseinandersetzung mir Frauenleben auch darauf hingewiesen, dass die negative Sicht auf die Mutter die Bildung der eigenen Identität behindere, weil sich daraus eine ablehnende Haltung gegenüber der eigenen Person entwickeln kann (Maierhofer 2002: 207-208).

Lourdes’ neglect haunts Jessica: “Sunny remembered how hurt Jessica was about Lourdes, whom she described as self-absorbed and always into her men” (Random Family 2003: 106) and if she would finally be able to establish a connection, to find her “Selbst-in-Beziehung” (Maierhofer 2002: 220) she probably could access a more genuine meaning of motherhood for her own children.

A drastic example of manipulating the male-defined borders of her identity as wife and mother, at once being and contesting the patriarchal ideal, is Coco.

Coco´s first-born Mercedes is a planned child: “They’d wanted a baby. They never used contraception and they’d been making love – a lot – for over a year. They’d finally gotten lucky” (Random Family 2003: 84). Her daughters Nikki, Nautica, and Pearl are not:

“Foxy was the first to be furious about Coco´s second pregnancy” (Random Family 2003: 103). While Cesar is imprisoned, Coco has a fling with her ex-boyfriend Kodak, who shows no interest in acting as Nikki´s father. It is never illuminated who the father of her third child, Nautica Cynthia Santos, is, and also her fourth daughter, Pearl, has no legitimate father: “Coco hoped that Wishman´s attention meant that he was finally interested in becoming Pearl’s father. “I guess he’s ready when he’s ready” Coco said, (Random Family 2003: 291). Her fifth child La-Monté Carmine Antonio John “joined his family right on time” (Random Family 2003: 354). It is the son Coco had longed for, and his father Frankie “was pleased; a new baby would give him a chance to do things right” (Random Family 2003: 340).

For Coco, her pregnancies are more than inconvenient side effects of sex:

Coco had three goals at the time of her brave Upstate move. [...] The first she circled: “my child out of the hospital.” The second: “Cesar in my life,” [...] The third: “My four girls to finish school and get married and do not come out like me!!!” On another scrap, she drew a fat heart and placed her family inside: “This is my life Right here: Mercedes, 4 years old; Nikki 3 years old; Nautica 11 months old (mother) Coco, 20 years old, Pearl 1 month old” (Random Family 2003: 211).

Mot materherhood andnity have been taken on as part of Coco´s identity: “This is my life Right here” (Random Family 2003: 211). She loves her children devotedly and does not use them to claim a femininity that is connected to financial dependence on men or a status as woman that binds a father to a mother, a man to a woman:

Except for one time two years earlier – when Coco had cajoled Foxy to ask Kodak’s mother to ask Kodak to buy Nikki´s winter coat- Coco had never asked her daughters´ fathers for help. She was proud of her independence. Some girls denied a baby’s father access to his child unless he handed over cash. Other mothers claimed they needed money for the baby, and then spent the money on clothes for themselves or clubbing or beer or cigarettes. Sometimes money was the main reason why girls had sex with boys. But Coco wanted her intimate relationships to be better than that (Random Family 2003: 291).

She neither gives birth to Mercedes nor La-Monté because she wants their fathers to stay with her. However, she senses that her motherhood will increase her status in the community: “Coco might have to share Cesar with other girls, but at least she was pregnant. She hoped to give him a son; regardless, she’d give him his first and therefore always be up front” (Random Family 2003: 85). Although she ´uses` her pregnancy to denote importance to her status regarding Cesar, she later on belies patriarchal stereotypes and claims authority and ownership of the mother-woman role. On some level she capitulates herself to a patriarchal system, in which she defines Mercedes as “Cesar’s first”, but she finally outgrows this heteropatriarchal definitions and attaches more meaning to her children than being linkages between men and women: “Coco had her moments of defiance: at family gatherings, instead of serving the men, the children were the first to get their plates of food” (Random Family 2003: 322). This small gesture of rebellion marks Coco as being able to give more meaning to the word mother than a biological state even under the pressure of heteropatriarchy. She goes even further and resists scripted communal behavior by allowing her daughters to look beyond the familiar role-models of women:

Coco had signed up Mercedes and Nikki for camp during the winter, and when May finally rolled around, she bravely stuck to her decision. It was a bold, unprecedented move – to willingly place her children in the hand of strangers – which incurred the disapproval and scorn of her family and friends. In her community, good mothering was premised on keeping one’s children away from authorities (Random Family 2003: 264).

The girls respond enthusiastically to the change and Coco has to realize that parents- or mothers- are the natural role-models of children; whatever they do will be imitated:
The Learning Center teacher introduced herself. She said, “One of Mercedes’ favorite books is Girls Can Do Anything”. “I wanna be a doctor!” Mercedes announced. Coco looked surprised. A flash of worry passed over Mercedes’ open face. Coco smiled dumbly at the floor. Mercedes added, “I want to be a mom” (Random Family 2003.272).

Coco is selfless enough to acknowledge the devastating effects of having the no alternative role-models: “Coco didn’t want her daughters to put up with what she had from men, but the best example she offered was her willingness to point out her own weaknesses and hypocrisies” (Random Family 2003: 322). Coco needs no teacher, no training, and no guidance to show her how to be a mother. It might be an important fact, though, that in contrast to Jessica, Coco “wasn’t raised by the street” (Random Family 2003: 27). She can remodel a maternal behavior that has enabled her to have a healthy, basic understanding of motherhood. Positive memories might trigger the ´inborn knowledge` of maternal affection.

Today, more than ever, feminism is about choice. In Random Family, this choice is not always acknowledged, and therefore motherhood and maternity become natural attributes of womanhood. In addition, motherhood is used to increase the status of a woman in the Random Family community, and children are often measured within masculine parameters as belonging to fathers, and in a fatal attempt to establish emotional ties between a man and a woman as father and mother that have not initially been there. Coco, however, contests these notions of motherhood successfully and outgrows the patriarchal-defined notions of motherhood. She truly claims authority and ownership to the mother-role and is insightful enough to hope that her children will have more authentic options and “do not come out like me” (Random Family 2003: 211). In the above section the underlying meanings of motherhood for one’s sense of ´self `as well as one’s position in the community have been discussed. In the next chapter it will become apparent that the entire institution of family is created around distinct types of femininity, and that living right is not necessarily rewarded

2.2.4 The Welfare Family - A gendered organization of social institutions

I grew up in East LA. And the way me and my friends got emancipated was to have a baby. Everybody thought than if we got married and had a baby, we’d be independent. We’d get to move out of our parent’s house and have our own welfare checks. It says a lot about the economics of East LA. that we looked forward to a welfare check, not a job (Chapkis 1997: 28). Emancipation, as depicted in the above quote, again renders women the objects, not the subjects of their lives. In this section, the choice between choosing agency over one’s role in the family, in contrast to being a good girl will be analyzed.

According to research, in contrast to Euro Americans, Latinos/as are less likely to have spouses/partners, have more children on average, and are more likely to be single parents – and therefore often poor: the 1980 census indicated that female-headed household income is about half that of the undifferentiated family mean (cf. Urciuoli 1996: 59-60). The welfare family is in fact a gendered institution.

Femininity and masculinity provide the motivation for a gendered organization for social institutions such as the Modern family. As individuals occupy different positions within the family, masculinity and femininity provide the raw materials for how to perform those positions as women and men (Schippers 2004: 18 – 19).

As already pointed out, violence is the subject of casual conversation in Random Family. Children who grow up witnessing or experiencing violence can become desensitized to the deteriorating effects of aggression and see it as a suitable way of obtaining what they want. One of the reasons identified, are gendered norms and a cultural definition of manhood that is linked to dominance, and a definition of womanhood that is linked to submissiveness.

As a next step, there will be a further analysis of what the underlying norms for gender roles – especially female roles - are in the text First, there is an internal distinction between Inside and Outside girls:

Inside vs. Outside Girl

This dichotomy is repeatedly used to describe two different types of femininity: the outdoor girls who act street, meaning showing assertive and aggressive sexual and verbal behavior, and the indoor girls who perpetuate culturally and socially ascribed gender roles.

“Iris stayed home, Coco preferred the street” (Random Family 2003: 31), “The truth was that Serena preferred to be outside” (Random Family 2003: 135), and Jessica is variously described as “portable” girl (Random Family 2003: 37, 49).

There is an underlying link between interiority/the domestic and femininity, as suggested by Carolyn Prorok:

Bodies are made into cultural products whether or not there are any physiological bases to such productions. As such patriarchy conflates femaleness with bodylines, reproductivity, materiality and interiority. This conflation is experienced in the everyday world of human interaction. (cf. Prorok 2000: 69)

Or as Gilbert and Gubar, in their introduction to The Madwoman in the Attic, put it: “But repeatedly throughout most male literature, a sweet heroine inside the house is opposed to a vicious bitch outside” (Gilbert, Gubar 1984: 28). They go on analyzing that “assertiveness, aggressiveness - all characteristics of a male life of ´significant action` – are ´monstrous` in women precisely because they are ´unfeminine` and therefore unsuited to a gentle life of ´contemplative purity`” (Gilbert, Gubar 1984: 28). This dichotomy of contemplative purity and assertiveness and significant action is perfectly mirrored in Random Family: “Church people generally lived their lives separate from the people who hung around outside” (Random Family 2003: 31). Outside becomes synonymous for hanging out, messing up, and acting street; which girls are not supposed to do. Jessica, “the country of sex itself” (Random Family 2003: 10) for example is opposed to George’s second girlfriend Gladys and his wife Vada, who both embody the “contemplative purity” Gilbert and Gubar talk about. Jessica, who always “kept a busy love life” (Random Family 2003: 72) is the vicious bitch outside whereas Gladys “who lived with her Catholic parents in a single-family home in a working-class neighborhood in the Bronx” comes from ”a straight up Little House on the Prairie neighborhood, said George both pleased and charmed. He needled Jessica by saying how much he preferred Glady´s ladylike company“ (Random Family 2003 64).

In general, outside is connected to danger:

Girls tended to stay close to home, as if they were literally tethered to their blocks. Some hung around in front of their mother’s buildings. Others weren’t allowed outdoors at all. Girls were anchored by younger siblings or their own kids or the unspoken laws of being girls. [...] Girls had responsibilities. Boys had bikes (Random Family 2003: 27).

Some working people kept their kids on lockdown to protect them from the street; some kids stayed outdoors, afraid of what awaited them inside. Everyone traversed the same stairwells and corner stores and bus stops, but sometimes moving in opposite directions. There was a kind of swing shift: The hanging out folks stradded home as the working people headed out; the working people returned just as the streets were heating up. Even within households, these tensions persisted (Random Family 2003: 31).

As far as femininity is concerned, women either live their life indoors or they interact outside – and usually life on the street created bad bitches, showing assertive behavior in sexual matters as outlined in the following chapter on The Empowering Effect of Sexuality and showing aggressiveness and attitude when acting street:

Back at her mother’s, Coco dressed to fight. She doubled up on T-shirts to avoid giving the street a free show. She tucked razor blades in her pony-tail and rubbed her face with her trusty Vaseline (Random Family 2003: 85)

Coco is willing to even use physical violence to defend her status as Cesar’s main girlfriend. In the previous excerpt, she prepares to fight for this status. In the following passage, she acts street again after being pregnant with her third child; she re-claims her bitch attitude after her pregnancy:

She became sassier – almost rowdy – as though Nautica´s arrival had given Coco clearance to act street. She dyed her hair blonde and blew it dry and straight, “dead like Jessica’s”. She got her nose pierced. She planned to go dancing. She dressed to go outdoors even when she was stuck inside. She bought three-inch fake-gold door-knocker earrings with the word LOVE suspended in the middle. She made announcements such as “I’m not to go down just because I got three children,” emphasizing her point with a shoulder roll. She rediscovered the fun of scrutinizing boys: “Now that I had the baby out, I’m ready to look!” Even her comments about Cesar were cheeky: “I don’t have to listen to him, I ain´t pregnant no more,” she declared (Random Family 2003: 168).

Both Coco and Jessica are outside girls, but importantly Coco “wasn’t a church girl and she wasn’t much of a school girl either, but she wasn’t raised by the street,” (Random Family 2003: 27). Within the Inside/Outside girl dichotomy resonates a second binary: virginity and school: “Virginity and school were discussed as though they were inextricably linked; the loss of one seemed to guarantee the abandonment of the other” (Random Family 2003: 170). This link is established continuously in the novel:
Serena was twelve, and showing signs of Jessica’s sleepy beauty. Both Coco and Milagros divided her world into two options – a belly, or school and a future (Random Family 2003: 300).

Serena had flunked out of summer school – but Jessica wanted to acknowledge that Serena had made it to the age of sixteen with her virginity intact. “I’ve got to give her credit for that, come on,” Jessica said (Random Family 2003: 391).p>

Nearly at the end of the narrative Serena voices the main problem of the intersectionality gender/race/class in Random Family: “They are so worried about me having sex. Why me? They don’t care if their sons do it, only their daughters. (...) If I want to have sex, I’m going to have sex. Everybody has sex” (Random Family 2003: 397).

The girls in Random Family lack alternative models; they model their behavior after their mothers and therefore rarely leave the boundaries of ascribed gendered, racialized, and class-based roles behind; or as LeBlanc herself put it: “Life in the Ghetto is extensively about routine; routine ways of acting and thinking” (Random Family 2003: 27).

Elaine and Iris, the sisters of Coco and Jessica, seem to provide alternative models to the outside girls Coco and Jessica. Elaine is the one who leads the large life in the end of the novel, “Elaine now had the large life; she had a good job, a wardrobe, credit cards, a car” (Random Family 2003: 334) and “Iris was the only person Coco knew who actually survived on her welfare benefits” (Random Family 2003: 147).

Elaine is introduced to her future husband Angel, “a wily drug dealer with a good sense of humor” (Random Family 2003: 14) early in the novel. But Angel, “like many neighborhood kids had enjoyed the lifestyle that accompanied dealing and had started using drugs. Then the money couldn’t come fast enough,” (Random Family 2003: 17). Later on, “Elaine lived with Angel and her two young sons in a tiny one-bedroom on Morrison. She was fighting to keep her house in order – her husband away from drugs and prison, and her two young sons away from their father’s influence” (Random Family 2003: 112). She reappears again in the story, once as a visitor at Serena’s birthday party; hectic with her “spotless sons and recalcitrant husband Angel in tow” (Random Family 2003: 140). Angel had stopped using drugs, but Elaine hadn’t forgiven him: “Just that morning she had been reminded of the camera that could have taken Serena’s birthday pictures if it hadn’t been hawked for dope. Once, he had sold off all her furniture” (Random Family 2003: 140). Later on in the novel, the burden of raising the twin boys Jessica gives birth to in jail falls to Elaine:

She and her husband Angel had agreed to look after them while Jessica completed her prison term. […] Elaine had completed her GED and volunteered at her sons` school as a teacher’s aide. She wanted to work, but her husband discouraged it, and she felt obliged to stay home and try to bring together her scattered family (Random Family 2003: 239).

Elaine feels ambivalent about her strong instinct for self-protection that has saved her from her siblings` fates. She had gone into therapy to learn how to control her temper with her children – counter acting the patterns of behavior learned at home from Lourdes. She manages to get by financially, but the burden of two extra children – Jessica’s twin boys – worries her extremely, “but she also couldn’t live with the thought of her two nephews in foster care” (Random Family 2003: 237). The arrangement does not last for long however. Elaine cannot trust her temper since Matthew’s ceaseless crying kept Elaine’s sons up, so they were cranky when it was time to get ready for school. Elaine became afraid that she would hurt Matthew and temporarily gave him to her downstairs neighbor. She was making arrangements to send them to Milagros (Random Family 2003: 239).

Iris, Coco´s older sister, is also characterized as a “homebody” (Random Family 2003: 31). She does most of the housework, since her mother Foxy has to work: “Iris cooked, fetched Coco from the corner, and fielded phone calls from the school, where Coco and Hector, the youngest, were always getting into fights” (Random Family 2003: 31). Iris suffers from the hectic family arrangement and longs for peace, “Iris didn’t want to abandon her mother, but she longed for peace –
a peace she hadn’t even known was possible until she’d spent two quiet weeks with a family upstate one summer, as a camper with the fresh air fund. She hated the constant fighting at her mother’s; someone was always taking someone else’s something, someone needing or getting hit or crying or complaining or bickering. […] Iris also hated Foxy´s boyfriend. Richi was unemployed, and because iris stayed indoors, she got the brunt of his restlessness, some of which he subdued with heroine. Iris was tired of serving him – preparing his coffee, watching his nature shows, and after he nodded out, dousing his cigarettes (Random Family 2003: 31).

Iris resolves to the solution suggested in the introductory quotation: she gets pregnant by her boyfriend Armando at age 15 (cf. Random Family 2003: 32). Iris is “the only person Coco knew who actually survived on her welfare benefits” (Random Family 2003: 147), her method was a stern personality, “hardness kept at bay all kinds of problems, and Iris could ward off potential borrowers with one stony look” (Random Family 2003: 146). In contrast to her sister Coco, she does not get entangled in the inward economy of borrowing and lending money and goods to others in need. Iris shows ambition to peruse a career:

Iris was making progress toward the realization of a life-long dream – she wanted to own a funeral home. ´At least dead people are quiet” she said. The local community college had a mortuary-science program Iris hoped to take; she had nearly completed her GED (Random Family 2003: 311).

However, living right takes its tolls: Iris had just started college and was struggling to keep up with her course work along with her household obligations; Armando had agreed to let her enroll only as long as their home life remained unaffected. She was dog-tired, Armando could be impatient and humorless (Random Family 2003: 320).

The next passage actually characterizes Iris` family situation. However, it can be argued that it also accounts for Elaine’s`:
The family anxiety projected an unspoken truth: that even living right- which is what Coco called it – was just another precarious hold. Poverty pulled everybody down. Coco loosened her body to minimize the impact of the fall; Iris and Armando froze, and the chill stiffened their kids, as well. Even indoors, when Armando planted himself in his favorite chair he gripped the arms (Random Family 2003: 147).

Violent experiences at home, drugs, and poverty weigh both Iris and Elaine’s family down. Although they escape the thug life, life on the streets, they act in their ascribed gender roles: “Women didn’t ask questions of men in public directly; unless they were angry, and then the questions weren’t really questions but indictments that called attention to their own wounds.

Iris even asked Armando’s permission to lend Coco money or give her a lift” (Random Family 2003: 322).

It can be said that Inside Girls perpetuate ascribed gender roles whereas Outside Girls aggressively contest them.

In this section the welfare family has been identified as a gendered institution. Poverty hits these families especially hard, because men are often absent. The different positions that women occupy in these families however place them often as sole providers of the family, and therefore contradict notions of machismo in which the man is situated in the dominant provider role. The Nexus of gender and being poor will further be analyzed in The Welfare Mother. In order not to trigger an imbalance of power dynamics Iris and Elaine strictly observe the boundaries of their feminine role and operate within these prescriptions. Coco and Jessica contest ascribed gender roles in many aspects; they are Outside Girls who are not good mothers in the traditional sense, and as we will see in the next chapter, no good girls in general.

2.2.5 The Empowering effect of Sexuality-– bitching at heteropatriarchy

Women are still disproportionally poor, overworked, and underpaid; women are still the deliberate targets of male sexual violence; women’s bodies are still heavily regulated by state policies criminalizing subcultural sexual practices and restricting access to birth control and abortion; and women are still stigmatized and punished for sexual activity beyond the confines of monogamous heterosexual marriage. These realities co-determine women’s experience of sex (Chapkis 1997: 29).

This quote from Live Sex Acts talks about all the restrictions and regulations women and their bodies face in a capitalist patriarchal society. Even engaging in sexual activity takes on a political dimension, when it comes to good versus bad sex However, in her introduction to Susie Bright´s Sexual State of the Union Susie Bright starts with the statement: “Lust brings out the liar in everyone. [...] everybody wants to be REAL, a real boy, an honest woman, unafraid and upright – but then desire, the ultimate honest, does us in” (Bright 1997: 11). This is commensurate with LeBlanc’s definition of the contradictory nature of femininity in Random Family:
Girls were surrounded by women who ignored the contradictions between what they said and what they did. Women routinely made grand announcements about all they wouldn’t tolerate, but the particulars were another thing entirely. Women didn’t ask questions of men in public directly; unless they were angry, and then the questions weren’t really questions but indictments that called attention to their own wounds (Random Family 2003: 322).

The stratification implied in the passage is of course more complicated than the incompability of lust and self-reliance, since in addition to emotional dependence components like economic dependence might interplay. However, fact is women face an erotic dilemma, since on the one hand their active sexuality devaluates them -”good mothers didn’t go from men to men not only because promiscuity was frowned upon” (Random Family 2003: 250) - on the other hand, manifests itself as powerful tool challenging the social and cultural norms about gender, sexuality, and patriarchal privilege. Although fidelity is in fact stipulated by the women but not guaranteed to the women, as we have seen in “Gender Roles”, Coco and Jessica keep a busy love life and thereby claim the right to be sexual and empowered Latina subjects: “Lust is antiauthority” (Bright 1997: 75). It is important to move away from a “crisis” framework in the analysis of female sexuality. In the previous chapter the issues of the dangers of sexuality have been broached; in this chapter the sexual agency of Latinas as a way to uncover and understand the social context of their decision-making will be the focus.

Hitherto, adolescent female sexuality composed a problem: Promiscuous and engaged in unprotected sex, teenage girls get pregnant, have children and thus find themselves socially, economically, and educationally deprived and disadvantaged. This crisis does not impact all girls equally, though. A report presented by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Vital Statistics revealed a steady decline in overall U.S. teen birth rates over the last decade. Latina youth, however, have now emerged as the most noticeable problem in teen pregnancy prevention efforts since their rates have not declined as significantly (García 2004: 4). Nevertheless, the crisis model is problematic: the body of the racialized teen mother becomes the problem itself, and their sexual activity is explained as just happening to them, as opposed to sex being something that they want to experience (cf. García 2004: 8-9). Sexuality and pregnancy are used interchangeably and therefore connecting the victimization of these young women to their continued low status within the U.S. social, economic, and political hierarchies.

In coding them as ´welfare mothers` or ´babies having babies`... race, class and cultural ideologies of the larger society mystify several important aspects of their social reality as neo-colonial racialized ethnic women (Sousa 1995 in García 2004: 9).

Sociologist Lorena García identifies the first time sexual intercourse happens as being the true marker of the ´sexually active` status of Latina youth (cf. García 2004: 7). In the Random Family community, virginity is not given up easily:

The high days of virginity put a girl in demand. For the girls, it was not simply a state but an asset that gave them a rare and coveted form of power; virginity could put sneakers on your feet. Ideally, it was something that a girl could make up her own mind about, something that really mattered. And, unlike good looks or real fathers or money, virginity was democratic. Even skanky girls who had it – while they had it possessed something tangible and clean (Random Family 2003: 33).

Later on, there are even more unspoken truths about the ´value` of sex:

Coco heard that white girls gave up sex easily. Boys didn’t have to buy them Pampers or milk or let the girl keep the change for cigarettes. Coco didn’t barter, either, but she allied herself with the demeanor of the Bronx (Random Family 2003: 249).

Coco locates these rules as being specifically something from the Bronx. One could argue that female bodies are made into commodities, especially when looking at the following abstract closely:

When a guy had money, girls where everywhere. [...] One of George’s block managers got sex from a girl for allowing her to sit in his car- without even having to take her driving. Other girls gave it up for a pair of sneakers, or a pack of Pampers, or cigarettes, or a take-out meal. Sex was currency (Random Family 2003: 54).

In this passage, sex is outspokenly labeled as currency. Anti-prostitution and Anti-pornography feminists would argue that sexuality cannot be separated from the person of the prostitute - or the girl who gives up sex for goods in this case - and that the sale of sexuality involves a fundamental sale of self. Selling sex is understood to involve a fundamentally “self-estranging process” as a woman develops an instrumental relationship to her sex and hence to herself (cf. Chapkis 1997: 71). Against this argument stands Pat Califia´s, who argues that whatever a woman sells, she has an abundance of it, as long as it happens according to her conditions or her terms:

The slut is, in Dworkin´s parlance, male property – a victim of male violence – a woman who accepts male definition of her sexuality. Instead, I believe that she is someone men hate because she is potentially beyond their control... A whore does not sell her body. She sells her time. So she has time that is not for sale that belongs to no one but herself. Domesticated women don’t dare put a price on their time (Pat Califia in Chapkis 1997: 30)

When Jessica experiences her ´first time`, similarly ambiguous arguments can be posted:

Jessica was glad for anybody’s attention, but she was especially flattered by Puma’s. [...] One thing led to another and next thing you know, Jessica and Puma were kissing on top of a pile of coats. [...] Both girls came out pregnant (Random Family 2003: 6)

As outlined in “The Heterosexual Matrix”, despite woman embracing and expressing sexual agency at different historical times and in different cultural settings, symbolic constructions of heterosexual sex still reduce it to penetrating and being penetrated,- taking and being taken (cf. Schippers 2004: 15). Of course, this scene is indicative of rigidly defined sexual boundaries and roles, in which female subjects are elevated as soon as they are ´someone’s girl`.

p> But one must not fall into the stereotypical assumption reported in the introduction to this chapter and confuse the problem of teenage pregnancy with teenage sexuality. This passage is indicative of expectations for young women in Jessica’s community that can shape power relations and inequalities among men and women: boys have sex with girls, and girls get pregnant. By engaging in sexual activity, Jessica willfully signals by cultural standards that she is no longer “una niña or una señorita” (cf. García 2004: 7). On one level she reveals her perceptive awareness of the uneven and unequal sexual statuses among men and women in her community. Jessica is repeatedly described in hyper-sexualized terms: “Jessica had this sexuality about herself and her domineering ways, (Random Family 2003: 9) she were the country of sex itself” (Random Family 2003: 10). This accounts for the importance of power dynamics involved in sex: She is the subject, not the object of desire. She becomes someone women and “men hate because she is potentially beyond their control” (Pat Califia in Chapkis 1997: 30). It is her looks and sexual agency that attract Boy George and thus help her to elevate herself – even if temporarily – from her circumstances. Jessica also threatens community-based rules when she, for example, ´makes` Tito, a member of her brother’s gang, break the FMP rules – “Loyalty was paramount. Nothing was to come between them – not other guys or crews, and never girls” (Random Family 2003: 64):

Tito had a wife, but suddenly there was Jessica in her grandmother’s old apartment, sitting on the couch before him, lifting off her tank top in front of a window with a view of the George Washington Bridge, grinning her invitation with a question that had only one answer: “You mind if I take it off? It’s hot!” (Random Family 2003: 97).

She also actively contests a fundamental ghetto rule in which “sex was also the boy’s right and his main girlfriend’s problem” (Random Family 2003: 54); a rule in which infidelity is acted out by men, not to men. Boy George has several girlfriends, but “Jessica kept a busy love of her own” (Random Family 2003: 72).

Repeatedly Jessica engages actively and joyfully in sex; outspokenly not always as an act of love. But human sexuality can be viewed as more of a social activity than a biological one whereby gender, class, and generational conflicts do not necessarily have to manifest themselves:

The sex was fantastic. They used to have competitions to see who could have the most orgasms. Tito was astonished about how much fun Jessica had in bed. After she came she would laugh and laugh and he would say: “Jessica, what’s wrong?” And she would say:” Nothing, stupid” (Random Family 2003: 100).

Laughter and fun are the key words in this passage – attributes that conservative feminists might value as second rate sexual activity since it is not monogamous in a heterosexual stable relationship. In another passage Jessica actively seduces a young Puerto Rican boy: Jessica realized that Edwin was nervous. She reached her arm up to the sky, showed him her tattoos, and how she could almost do a split. “Please,” Edwin said. “Please stop doing that. Will you please stop doing that?” “Yo, why?” she asked, mock innocently. “You’re a good-looking boy.” “I’m not a boy.” “You’re a good-looking young man, you know.” “I’m not so young.” “Yeah, well, then, let’s go to it.” “For real?” he asked. Jessica laughed. “He was sixteen at the time,” Jessica said much later, still tender at the memory. She thought she would have to lead the way. “But,” she added, “he proved me wrong” (Random Family 2003: 106).

Her approach to sexual knowledge and power enable her to subvert uneven and unequal statuses among men and women in her community. It is her way of asserting some control over otherwise rigid ascribed hierarchies in which women are taken and men take. She gains power through her sexual experience, ultimately attempting to assert herself as a sexual agent.

Coco embodies a similarly playful attitude towards sex. Her first time narrative is not scripted by romance and passion, but by adventurous experimenting and finding one’s sexual identity:

They kissed with Cesar sitting on the hood of a car, bent over Coco´s uplifted chin. They began to make love, and Coco stayed silly and happy, not scared and sad like other girls he’d been with. She was spontaneous, which was like being with a new girl every day (Random Family 2003: 35). Coco loved rainy days because bad weather temporarily released the grip of the streets: Cesar stayed indoors and his friends stayed home. Coco would show up and, without a word, start taking her clothes off. “Wait,” Cesar would say, “I’m not even awake.” They spent whole mornings and afternoons in bed, having sex and playing Nintendo. [...] Sometimes, if Cesar wasn’t in the mood to make love, Coco could convince him. “She would just take the sex from me,” said Cesar (Random Family 2003: 63).

As long as Cesar is still in a relationship with Coco, he values her adventurousness and spontaneity. However, when in jail he reproaches her for her carnality: “Start thinking with your mind and stop thinking with your pussy” (Random Family 2003: 280)

He reduces her to her reproductive organ and labels her a whore. Women are usually called whores for being openly or highly sexual. Rebecca Kaplan, in Live Sex Acts, attributes these labels to an unconscious masculine fear of loss of dominance; which is highly likely in Cesar’s case since he is locked up and therefore in a compulsory situation of powerlessness:

Men who yell at women will often call them a “whore” and a “dyke” in the same breath.

How is it that a woman can be simultaneously accused of having too much sex with a man (whore) and too little sex with men (dyke)? This should make us realize that both of these terms condemn women’s sexual autonomy. Whores and dykes are a threat to heteropatriarchy because both set their own rules for sex - rules which deny men the right to unlimited access to women’s sexuality (Rebecca Kaplan in Chapkis 1997: 30).

Intriguingly, although three generations of women are represented in Random Family who are outed as teenage mothers, the girls in Random Family are never educated about but only warned about sex. It is questionable if this is indicative of a sexual moral that might be due to Puerto Rican cultural heritage or intergenerational ignorance. Serena states: “They are so worried about me having sex. Why me? They don’t care if their sons do it, only their daughters. (...) If I want to have sex, I’m going to have sex. Everybody has sex “(Random Family 2003: 397) and she is right.

Having sex is not the problem – having unprotected sex is. Susie Bright sums it up by saying: “We need to stop the hysterical notions that comprehensive sex education will create an army of nymphomaniacs, because what it WILL do is save a lot of lives and fearful minds” (Bright 1997: 182). Teenagers are said to have sex for all sorts of sad and rebellious reasons. In fact, the happiness of first sexual adventures, “the intense comfort and familiarity that comes with finding your first lover, the first person you get to know intimately” (Bright 1997: 181) is missed out. Female sexual agency must not be condemned – risky sexual behavior must. Claiming the right to be sexual agents positions Coco and Jessica outside the realm of good girl behavior, in the next chapter an even more profound rebellion in terms of sexual behavior will be discussed.

2.2.6 Homosexuality – A Feminized Space

What turns you on may not match your artistic values, your romantic choices in real life, your political views, but it is just as much part of you, just as real and substantial, as any other aspect. It’s not a defect or weakness, it’s your intuitive ability to take all that’s unbearable about life and turn it into juice – eroticism (Bright 1997: 153). In the above quote Bright brings back her idea that lust “does us in” – it reveals truths about oneself that might not match cultural idealized femininity or one’s own image of self, nevertheless it is an important part of one’s identity. In fact, although desire is a highly personal subject, it is politicized in our culture. Regardless of one’s sexual orientation, the possession of erotic desire for the feminine object is masculinizing and being the object of masculine desire is feminizing. Heterosexual desire is the essential basis of the difference and complimentarily (what do you mean here?) of femininity and masculinity, and therefore must remain an unquestionable component to gender hegemony (cf. Schippers 2004: 15). If a woman changes her object of desire from being masculine to being feminine, she basically violates gender hegemony, since the heterosexual matrix with its categories femininity and masculinity are important tools for social control. This works primarily through people’s investment in maintaining a socially acceptable gender identity (cf. Johnson 1997: 71). Under patriarchy, gender is defined in ways with masculine and feminine imagery that portrays male and female as two opposite sorts of human beings. In patriarchal ideology, each gender is assigned an immutable nature fixed in the body and permanently set apart from the other (cf. Johnson 1997: 72). Switching desire strictly violates the assigned ´immutable` nature of gender boundaries and therefore homosexual individuals are often regarded as posing a threat to what is normal and natural. The role of gay and lesbian oppression in maintaining patriarchy is clear when we look how it works in practice. When public attention was first focused on lesbians and gays, it was common to stereotype couples as conforming to the model of patriarchal heterosexuality with one partner in a dominant male role (“butch”) and the other in a subordinated female role (“femme”). In other words, in order to deflect a potential challenge to patriarchy, gays and lesbians were portrayed as sexually deviant but socially conforming to the most important element of patriarchal heterosexuality – the domination of one partner by the other, and the identification of dominance with men and masculinity, - hence the tendency to describe the dominant partner in a lesbian relationship as masculine (cf. Johnson 1997: 70). JoAnn Loulan in Our Right To Love (1996) explains this phenomenon of inscribing heteropatriarchal roles onto lesbians as follows: We have been brought up to be heterosexual women, but, because we are not, we question whether we belong in our gender. The current masculine/feminine paradigm literally stops us from being able to explain who we are. A weapon the dominant culture and the lesbian culture have used against various lesbian expressions of gender is to describe some lesbian experience as 'role'. This is especially true in reference to butch/femme. None of true gender identity is a role; there are simply different realities of gender identification. The lack of language to explain it doesn't mean it isn't real (Loulan 1996). In her seventh year of incarnation, Jessica falls in love with a fellow inmate at Danbury; her object of desire switches from being masculine to being feminine. When she shares this news with her brother Cesar, his reaction is not at all negative: Jessica worried about her brother’s reaction to her lesbian relationships: “Who am I to say you’re wrong because you enjoy women?” he wrote. “Shit! I love women so much I understand,” and he offered her his expertise in pleasing women” (Random Family 2003: 287). Cesar’s reacts surprisingly understandingly: he does not limit his sister’s identity to a gender role, but instead allows her identity to attach variables such as “desire for a feminine object”, without altering his vision of her as a person. Jessica’s possible bisexual tendencies are hinted on early in the narrative: She flirted easily with girls and boys, men and women alike. Jessica appeared to have no boundaries, as though she were the country of sex itself (Random Family 2003: 10). However, engaging in sexual or romantic activity with another woman is mentioned for the first time when Jessica meets Nilda: Her optimism about the future derived in part from the restorative powers of a new love. Jessica had met Nilda, a shy old-world Puerto Rican girl, in the recreation room. [...] “Take you head (hat) off,” Jessica had said suggestively. “You got long hair under your hat.” She smiled her fantastic smile. Nilda removed her hat. “You got real pretty hair,” complimented Jessica. She then invited Nilda to give her a birthday kiss – although it wasn’t her birthday. Before the week was out, they had fallen in love (Random Family 2003: 299). In fact, Jessica does not only contest the heterosexual matrix, she also contests reactionary notions of lesbianism: she is the femme fatal that is attracted to a shy pretty girl with long hair. Susie Bright, an identifying high femme, comments on a similar situation she experienced herself as follows: I think lots of straight people who’ve been surprised by my girl-friends – or surprised that I was with them in my heels and cleavage – have this burn of annoyance afterward, like, “What do these queers want? They want to wear a dress, then they don’t; they want to look like a dick, but they want you to call them a woman. Well, they can’t have it both ways!” But that’s where they’re wrong, and even more than that, envious – you cannot only have it both ways, you can have it ALL ways, which is many more than two and looks a lot like infinity. Recognizing who people ARE, what they are signaling about themselves, takes a little more time and a LOT less prejudice than most people have been prepared to greet the world with, (Bright 1997: 88-89). The second person whose sexuality seems to deviate from the norm is Milagros: One night, after a serious fight with Frankie, Milagros and the kids came to keep Coco company. At 4 A.M, all the children asleep around them, Milagros said, “I’m just going to stay here, it’s too late.” [...] Later, Coco said she woke to find Milagros snuggling into her. Appalled, but still pretending she was sleeping, Coco shoved her away; Milagros collected the twins and left (Random Family 2003: 274) There is no previous or further link about Milagros’ sexuality, but from that point on her heterosexuality is in doubt; her identity is subject to the “misogynist representation of male desire – where any women who does not support or like a man who likes her is by definition dishonest, scheming, unfaithful or a lesbian” (Morgan 2005: 436). Fact is, Milagros does not conform to the heterosexual matrix, since she primarily perceives men not as objects of sexual desire but as threats:

Milagros trusted no man. Night after night, she said, she’d seen her own mother beaten by her boyfriend, and the next men were no better. Too many friends had been molested by brothers or stepfathers or uncles or somebody’s friend (Random Family 2003: 229).

The injustice of evaluating her identity by gossiping about her sexuality is articulately stated by Marcyliena Morgan: “Some women are constantly besieged with gossip regarding their sexuality, a form of gossip not summarily directed toward men. Mainly because they insist on respect for and the safety of women, they are often rumored to be lesbian and bisexual” (Morgan 2005: 437)

It is Milagros dismissal of men, not her possible sexual preference for women, which makes her the object of derogatory gossip. In a community that elevates men as more valuable human beings, a straight animosity of masculinity is frowned upon.

Generally, homosexuality is thematized in Random Family as being seminally open: it is treated in terms of desire, not identity. Broaching the issue of sexual desire as being open to fluctuation is especially apparent in the passage of Jessica’s bus ride back to the Bronx: On the ride she caught up on the gossip – which guards had divorced or retired, which physician’s assistant was dating which ex-inmate, who’d gone back to being straight and who stayed gay (Random Family 2003: 332).

Both Jessica and Milagros are released from heteropatriarchical subscriptions; Jessica by being physically confined to the feminized space of jail, and Milagros due to her general animosity of displaying masculinity. Jessica claims and is granted a sexual freedom that is rarely acknowledged in feminist western society. Susie Bright calls sexual freedom the “antithesis of conformity” (Bright 1997: 80) and therefore elevates Jessica and Milagros to non-conforming bitches; or, as Gilbert and Gubar in “The Mad Woman in the Attic” have pointed out: “Women can appear from certain points of view to stand both under and over (but really simply outside of) the sphere of culture’s hegemony,” (Gilbert, Gubar 1984: 19). Gloria Anzaldua writes, “For the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make against her native culture is through her sexual behavior. She goes against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality” (Naber 2006: 101). This passage should introduce the reader to the second part of this paper dealing with ethnicity. It will introduce the idea that the intersection of the coordinates of power gender and race are inextricably linked for the women in Random Family and Puerto Rican migrants in the U.S in general.

We’ve assumed that there is something which we can call our identity which, in a rapidly shifting world, has the advantage of staying still... It’s a kind of fixed point of thought and being, a ground of action, a still point in a turning world... In fact, identity is something that happens over time, that is never absolutely stable, that is subject to the play of history and the play of difference (Hall in Pinderhughes 1997:15).

In the abstract from Stuart Hall’s Ethnicity: Identity and Difference, the phrase “play of history and difference” is key to the analysis.

In III. Bad Ethics it will be outlined how Puerto Ricanness per se is a hindering factor for the integration and assigned status of the Random Family women in the U.S, which classifies them morally as second class citizens. However, ethnicity is also an important point of reference for their process of identification. A form of immigrant nostalgia connects the happiest moments to their ethnicity.

Throughout Random Family, the issue of race and ethnicity is not a dominant topic, but constantly present. “A sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican girl with bright hazel eyes, a huge, inviting smile, and a voluptuous shape, she radiated intimacy wherever she went” (Random Family 2003:1). From the very first page on, they interact in a space that is undoubtedly Latin, and predominantly Puerto Rican. “Car stereos thudded and Spanish radio tunes wafted down from windows, while Lourdes was cooking her Sofrito” (Random Family 2003:2).

Whenever there is contact with someone who is not Puerto Rican it seems to be noteworthy: “They were the only Puerto Ricans in the club; everyone else was black. Boy George preferred not to hire Puerto Ricans. He believed his own kind were more likely to betray him” (Random Family 2003: 20). When the characters move physically, contact with other people than Puerto Rican´s is avoided: “There were about 20 other girls living in Thorpe [...] after Coco carried the sleeping girls into the bedroom, she cleaned or visited with Jezel and Maritza, the other Puerto Rican girls at Thorpe” (Random Family 2003: 152).

However, there are frequent references to skin-color and nationalities: “Jessica was intrigued: George listened to roll and roll, like a white boy” (Random Family 2003: 19) or “Indians were the most generous; Panamanians were fair enough; she couldn’t speak truthfully about Ecuadorians because she hadn’t handled too many of them. But she resolutely refused to deal with Mexicans, and Dominicans were, as ever, the worst “(Random Family 2003: 292), “Coco concentrated on the positive qualities of her mother’s boyfriend. He was handsome – light-skinned, with blue eyes - and he and her mother matched: Foxy had green eyes and platinum-blond hair” (Random Family 2003: 32).

Notably, light-skin is always portrayed as something positive, whereas black skin is set in a negative context: “A good-looking Puerto Rican white girl, going with a black guy that makes me sick to my stomach” Richi said. At the birthday party, Foxy assured him the black guy was just a friend” (Random Family 2003: 270).

Puerto Ricans (and Latin Americans in general) do not equate race in simple ways with descent-based physiological classification. Race in Puerto Rico also involves individual appearance, class, and cultural elements; above all, being Puerto Rican supersedes being black or white. The opposite is true in the United States. Puerto Ricans in the United States draw on both systems depending on the context and social pressure. Even when faced with the rigid U.S. racial dichotomy, Puerto Ricans tend to blend categorical elements into a more culturally nuanced reading (cf. Urciuoli 1996: 25).

Darker-skinned Puerto Ricans face a double-assault: prejudices against Latinos and severe discrimination against blacks left them total victim to job and housing segregation.

But as a matter of fact, as seen in the examples given above, some families adapted to these prejudices by showing preference for their lighter-skinned children. Young girls especially are often reminded to hold their lips together tightly to make them appear thinner and to straighten their hair: “Jessica, who was also home the day Coco met Lourdes, was the most beautiful girl Coco had ever seen: light-skinned, with dead hair like a white girl’s” (Random Family 2003: 37).

The fact that being Puertoriquenas never explicitly marks the Random Family women as ´Others` throughout the novel is highly important.

They seem to live their lives in an exclusively ´Puerto Rican space`; more or less ignoring the white population they share New York City with.

This ostensive refusal or inability to interact with ´whites` reflects the combined effect of various factors that come along with circumstances of living: poverty, a specific pattern of residential segregation, discrimination, and the development of alternative institutions and procedures in the their Puerto Rican community. As a matter of fact, being Puerto Rican in the U. S and especially in New York City, already ´marks` them as categorical Other. Social problems are realized as categories of people sorted out by income, race/ethnicity, age and gender. In this way black or Puerto Rican become metonyms for and naturally connected to the idea of an underclass. In this metonymy, race/class difference becomes morally marked. Activities seen as typical of bad citizens (dropping out of school, becoming teenage mothers, taking drugs, committing crimes, going on welfare) are habitually associated with, for example, Puerto Ricans, and become ´explanations` for their ´failure` (cf. Urciuoli 1996: 26). How Puerto Ricans came to be morally marked has roots in their colonial history.

3.1 Visions of Disorder: How Puerto Ricans Became Others

Puerto Rico
You ugly island
Island of tropic diseases
Always the hurricanes blowing
Always the population growing
And the money owing,
And the babies crying,
And the bullets flying.
I like the island Manhattan.
Smoke on your pipe and put that in!
(West Side Story: America I.5 1957)

This stanza, taken from the well-known Broadway musical West Side Story, signifies best how the tropical island of Puerto Rico is portrayed in public main stream U.S. discourse. Anita, originally played by the actress Rita Moreno, labels Puerto Rico as an underdeveloped country with all kinds of natural disasters (hurricanes, diseases), socio-economic and demographic problems (over-population, depts.) and, finally, crime (bullets flying). By doing so, she echoes the dominant – U.S. – ideology. (cf. Sandoval Sanchez: 61-62).

Latinos are currently the largest minority group in the United States. The Census estimates the Latino population in the year 2000 to be 35.3 million, not counting about 5 million who may have been missed by census-takers (illegal immigrants), and 3.5 million Puerto Ricans who live in Puerto Rico but who, as U. S. citizens, move freely back and forth to “the mainland” (cf. William Velez and Michael Martin 2003: 5). At the time, 2.7 million Puerto Ricans were living permanently in the United States (cf. Garza 1994:12-13).

The image of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. is a construct of sociohistorical circumstances that is deeply rooted in colonial history. From the day General Miles issued his proclamation by which Puerto Rico became U.S. territory in 1898, U.S. investors and policy makers redefined and reorganized Puerto Rico with two principle goals in mind: to make it profitable for U.S. business interests and to remake educational, political, and other internal structures in the image of a mini-democracy, but all the while strictly containing the capacity for independent political action. Labor, education, language, and health policies were instituted to fix what was ´wrong` with Puerto Rico, to take control of human matter out of place and relocate, contain, and reshape it. Puerto Ricans have always been subject to the U.S. racialized vision of Latin America (cf. Urciuoli 1996: 42).

U.S. perceptions of Puerto Ricans is that of a formless and dangerous “mass”, emerging from decades of discourse among policy makers, media, and academics (cf. Urciuoli 1996:41). Almost as soon as Puerto Rico became U.S. territory in 1898, U.S. policy makers talked about its “over-population.” In doing so, they focused on Puerto Rico as an undifferentiated and uncontrolled mass, which further essentialized their notions of an assumed “Puerto Rican character”: When in 1928 Puerto Rican officials demanded “Liberty or Death”, citing Patrick Henry, in written form from President Calvin Coolidge, this is what he responded: We found the people of Porto Rico [sic – U.S authorities changed the name of Puerto Rico to Porto Rico in 1900 because they could not pronounce the correct name] ignorant, poverty stricken and diseased, not knowing what constituted a free and democratic government and without the experience of having participated in any government. [It is] unreasonable to suggest that the people of Porto Rico...will progress...isolated from the source from which they have received practically their only hope of progress (quoted in Garza 1994: 91-92).

Until 1948 Puerto Rican people were not allowed to elect their own governor, children had to learn English in school, family-centered sugar haciendas were replaced by modern and profitable plantations owned by huge American companies in which the Puerto Ricans had to work for substandard wages. Overpopulation was seen as a grave obstacle to Puerto Rican industrial development, and migration was proposed as a solution as early as 1901 (cf. Urciuoli 1996: 44).

By 1920 up to 20,000 Puerto Ricans lived in 44 U.S States, most of them in New York City. The largest early colonia (Spanish speaking neighborhood) developed in Manhattan’s East Side, on the fringe of African American Harlem – “Spanish Harlem”. During WWI Congress passed The Jones Act, making Puerto Ricans U.S citizens; not an act triggered by humanity, but rather the need for bodies to fight in Europe. Pandering to their sense of ´new nationality`, within a month 18,000 young PR men joined the army forces. The new ´citizenship status` was – and still is – highly unjust and is reminiscent of colonial times: Puerto Ricans cannot vote in presidential elections, those residing in the U.S permanently can theoretically vote in local elections, but difficult and “culturally biased” (cf. Garza 1994:90) literacy tests in English make it impossible for most. The island legislature and Supreme Court justices are appointed by the U.S.

III. BAD ETHNICS

3.2 The Morality of Being Minority

n 1935, The Special Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York administered intelligence tests designed for English- speaking children to 156 Puerto Rican school children. The result was the official announcement that “Puerto Rican children have significantly lower IQs than American-born white children” and that they were “mentally deficient” and “intellectually immature” (cf. Garza 1994: 97-98). Parents’ organizations protested and demanded bilingual education, but their demands were left unheard by the Roosevelt administration. Racism became a more and more pressing matter; in response to such racist incidents, The Munoz Martin government in post-World War II Puerto Rico started handing out pamphlets to Puerto Ricans heading for the U.S, attempting to prepare them for the racism they were about to be confronted with:

If one Puerto Rican steals, Americans who are prejudiced say that all Puerto Ricans are thieves. If one Puerto Rican doesn’t work, prejudiced Americans say all of us are lazy. If one Puerto Rican throws his garbage into the street instead of into the trash can, prejudiced Americans say that all Puerto Ricans have filthy habits. Therefore, each mistake by a Puerto Rican is paid by all. How? We pay, because a bad opinion of us is formed. And the result may be that they discredit us, they won’t give us work, or they deny us our rights” (Garza 1994: 101).

The burden of discrimination was especially heavy on women. They were not excluded from economic exploitation and in addition to their status as a minority and economically disenfranchised -and thus “second class” immigrants- they had to endure racialized misogyny. About a quarter of all Puertoriquenas in the United States worked at a variety of outside jobs; unnumbered sewed, embroiled, baby-sat, or cared for elders at home for money. Long working hours, unhealthy conditions in the factory and low wages left many children unattended, parents sick, and the community in El Barrio (Spanish-speaking neighborhood) dependant on each other. Taking care for one another’s children or sick relatives gave a new meaning to the tradition of compadrazo (godparents) - meaning communal responsibility mostly taken on by women, of course.

In early American film production, the roles associated with Latinas were a cantina girl and a Vamp. As time progressed Latinas played the roles of prostitutes, drug addicts, uneducated, and sometimes innocent victims in movies. All of these roles can fit into two modern categories: the innocent and passive Latina servant, and the Spitfire/Whore, the hot-blooded “Tamale" (cf. “Latinas Representation in Film” 1999).

This has not significantly changed up to the present day. When trying to find a contemporary representation of Puerto Rican women in film, the most prominent one was that of Jennifer Lopez in Maid in Manhattan – a self-explanatory title.

The fact is the racialized and feminized vision of Puerto Rican women is that of a disordered and infantilized mass, their roles as mothers unfulfilled since their children were seen as “mentally deficient” and the women themselves as servants or over-sexualized beings.

To the intersection of race and class, the aspect of gender must be added; drastically exemplified by citing Vásquez-Calzada´s discovery that 35.5 percent of women between ages of 15 and 45 in Puerto Rico had been sterilized by 1968. According to Lopez (1987) in Exposing Prejudice, such practices are part of a U. S. ideology of population control. Doctors treating women in Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican women in New York found sterilization to be an efficient way of dealing with patients they considered too ignorant to practice effective birth control (cf. Urciuoli 1996: 44).

The crucial aspect for analysis is the fact that abstract ideas such as Culture of Poverty, Hot Tamale, or ´underclass` do not stay abstract for long, but rather take an essentialized, almost tangible human form, entering U.S. public consciousness as natural, obvious, and needing no explanation. The welfare queen, the dope dealer, the street kid who wracks up arrest after arrest, the thirteen year old mother; all become natural, obvious results of group-defining traits (cf. Urciuoli: 54) . In the U.S. public consciousness, the worst often comes to stand for the whole. As we will see, inscribing certain traits as ´natural` attributes of an ethnic community happens to the Puerto Ricans community by taking the fate of Puerto Ricans in New York City as exemplary for the entire community.