Skip to main content

Food, Consciousness, and Feminism in Denise Chávez’s Loving Pedro Infante

  • Chapter
Rethinking Chicana/o Literature through Food

Part of the book series: Literatures of the Americas ((LOA))

  • 152 Accesses

Abstract

In Loving Pedro Infante (2001), Teresa, affectionately called La Tere, narrates her story in the first person: a divorced Chicana in her thirties with no children, she falls in love with Lucio Valadez, a Chicano man five years younger than her, married and with a nine-year-old daughter. The story takes place in the 1980s or 1990s in the fictitious Cabritoville, a town on the border of New Mexico and Mexico, near El Paso, whose population is a mix of Anglo-Americans, Chicanos, and Mexicans. Tere works at the local school as an assistant to the teachers. Her genuine passion and admiration for the Mexican actor Pedro Infante and his filmography has driven her to become a member of the North American Fan Club of Pedro Infante, el Club de Admiradores Norteamericanos # 256, in which she serves as secretary. The members of this club are about 16 women of Tere’s and her mother’s generation. The only male member of the club is Ubaldo Miranda, a young Chicano homosexual whose veneration for the emblematic actor and singer is equal to that of the women.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Works Cited

  • Avila, Saint Teresa of. Book of Foundations. Ed. John J. Burke. New York: The Colombus P, 1911. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, of the Order of Our Lady ofCarmel. Written By Helself. Trans. David Lewis. London: Thomas Baker, 1904. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bendix, Regina. In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1997. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bilinkoff, Jodi. The Avila of Saint Teresa. Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boulay, Shirley du. Teresa of Avila. An Extraordinary Life. New York: Blue Bridge, 2004. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Catechism of the Catholic Church. Washington: United States Catholic Conference—Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chávez, Denise. Face of an Angel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. Loving Pedro Infante. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. A Taco Testimony. Meditations on Family, Food and Culture. Tucson: Río Nuevo Publishers, 2006. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Espinosa, Gastón and Mario T. García, eds. Mexican American Religions. Spirituality, Activism, and Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischler, Claude. “Food, Self and Identity.” Social Science Information 27 (June 1988): 275–92. Print.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. Trans. James Strachey. London: Routledge, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graham, Billy. The 7 Deadly Sins. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1955. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ikas, Karin Rosa. “Chávez, Denise. Novelist, Playwright, and Actress.” Chicana Ways. Conversations with Ten Chicana Writers. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2002. 46–65. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCracken, Ellen. “Voice and Vision in Chicana Religious Practice. The Literary Re-elaborations of Mary Helen Ponce, Denise Chávez and Sandra Cisneros.” Eds. Espinosa and García, eds. Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism, and Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2008 242–60. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mehaffy, Marilyn and AnaLouise Keating. “‘Carrying the Message’: Denise Chávez on the Politics of Chicana Becoming.” Aztlán 26.1 (2001): 127–56. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Negra, Diane. “Ethnic Food Fetishim, Whiteness, and Nostalgia in Recent Film and Television.” The Velvet Light Trap 50 (2002): 62–76. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pascual, Nieves. “Dos bocados de cardenal: Cristina García y Ana Menéndez.” Guayaba Sweet: Litemtum cubana en Estados Unidos. Eds. Laura Alonso Gallo and Fabio Murrieta. Cádiz, Aduana Vieja, 2003. 153–68. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scholliers, Peter. “Meals, Food Narratives, and Sentiments of Belonging in Past and Present.” Food, Drink and Identity. Cooking, Eating and Drinking in Europe Since the Middle Ages. Ed. Peter Scholliers. Oxford: Berg, 2001. 3–22. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schuegraf, Ernst. Cooking with the Saints: An Illustrated Treasury of Authentic Recipes Old and Modern. Hong Kong: Ignatius P, 2001. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skubal, Susanne. Word of Mouth. Food and Fiction after Freud. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Socolovsky, Maya. “Narrative and Traumatic Memory in Denise Chávez’s Face of an Angel.” Melus 28.4 (2003):187–205. Print.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul. Trans. E. Allison Peers. Waldford: Wilder Publications, 2008.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tafoya, Jesús L. “La reconstructión de la figura materna en la narrativa de Denise Chávez.” Lamar Journal of the Humanities 33.1 (2008): 5–12. Print.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, Alison. Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990. Print.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Nieves Pascual Soler Meredith E. Abarca

Copyright information

© 2013 Nieves Pascual Soler and Meredith E. Abarca

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Gallo, L.P.A. (2013). Food, Consciousness, and Feminism in Denise Chávez’s Loving Pedro Infante . In: Soler, N.P., Abarca, M.E. (eds) Rethinking Chicana/o Literature through Food. Literatures of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137371447_6

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics