The Desert is no Lady. Women artists of the American South West - ACE275.5

Evening and night scenes in towns. Images of Emiliano Zapata. VO Sandra Cisneros talking about her obsession with Zapata, and the eyes of Zapata as the source of one of her stories. Cisneros on Zapata’s common law wife; she could find little information about her so had to invent her story. Photograph of revolutionary army. Cisneros on inventing a woman powerful enough to have the same stature as a great general. Cisneros says that as the woman was Indian and poor, she could have made her only a whore or a witch, and chose the latter. Landscape, photographs of revolutionary army, of embroidered shawl, of woman lighting candles in church, of women shooting rifles: Cisneros reads part of her story over. Cisneros says that understanding the lives of Latino and Chicano women helps women to understand themselves, to rid themselves of detrimental emotions like shame. Roads and landscapes. Shop-fronts, billboards, people. Luci Tapanhonso reading a story to a class of adolescents about a young woman who is bemoaning her relationship with a Navajo cowboy. Landscapes. VO of Pat Mora reading The Desert is no Lady (1984). Mora saying that she feels the desert is a sensual being, in a primal or mythic sense; there’s a lot of energy in the desert. Landscapes and desert plants. Mora’s VO saying that the desert is untameable, full of textures, colours and surprises.