Kristy Nabhan-Warren

Like so many other multicultural texts, Kristy Nabhan-Warren’s The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism, projects images of the white female as asexual, weak, and shallow.

In the introduction to The Virgin of El Barrio, Nabhan-Warren states that she thinks it is important for the reader to know her background. She sets forth to establish not only her personal ethnic distinction, but, also the rich ethnic diversity of the region from which she hails: northwestern Indiana. Nabhan-Warren is not just a white woman from a landlocked region of the United States’ interior. She has a transnational heritage: Lebanese, Swedish, Polish, and Croatian. Moreover, Nabhan-Warren’s childhood friendship with a Mexican American Catholic spawned her interest in the culture. (14) Is it important for the reader to understand Nabhan-Warren’s heritage? Given the religious nature of the text, her Lutheran upbringing is probably relevant. On the other hand, Nabhan-Warren may mention her Lebanese paternal grandfather to establish personal credibility as more than a gringo.
While the Virgin of the Americas who appeared to Estella Ruiz is Hispanic, her features are more white than those of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She has a fair olive complexion and blue eyes. Several of the Mexican American women who visited the shrine and shared their stories with Nabhan-Warren commented on how they related more to the Virgin of Guadalupe. (191) Is it coincidental that the Virgin of the America is light skinned like Estella Ruiz herself? After all, Estella had a history of jealousy over her husband Reyes’s relationship with the dark-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe. Estella’s virgin is a mother, a friend, a confidant. Reyes wanted to dance with the Blessed Mother, the virgin to whom he prayed. ( 29) As a light-skinned woman in a Mexican American community Estella seems to have viewed herself as less sensual than her darker skinned contemporaries. By casting her whiteness onto her Virgin apparitions, Estella was able to give value to her complexion and recast the fair-skinned woman into an image of virtue.… (més)