Maylei Blackwell’s Chicana Power! focuses on the female college students of the 1960s/70s Chicana social movement. At this time, more females are entering college, but Blackwell explains how it was difficult for these chicanas to focus on studies while also fighting for their rights to equality. While these revolutionary students were paving the way for future females, Blackwell notes how these chicanas “drew their sense of political agency and gender identity from other community-based “traditions” of female strength and resistance” (Blackwell 47), finding role models in the strong women of their families. In Alice Bag’s reflection on her experience at a Vietnam War protest, she recalls how, before that day, “policemen had been the knights in shining armor” (Bag 70). However, when she saw the police respond with violence, Bag no longer viewed these knights as role models. Similar to the college activists described by Blackwell, Bag took this experience and began finding new role models in her community and the examples of activism across the globe. Bag’s song, “White Justice” combines footage from the protest with images of police violence in the 2010s. Bag used her experience and role models to represent this continuous social movement through song. What inspired me in these readings were the stories of those who found the most strength in their families and communities.
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