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| name = Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
| name = Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
| image = [[Image:Cisneros.png|200px|Front cover]]
| image = [[Image:Cisneros.png|200px|Front cover]]
| image_caption = ''Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories'' first edition cover.
| image_caption = First edition cover
| author = [[Sandra Cisneros]]
| author = [[Sandra Cisneros]]
| illustrator =
| illustrator =
| cover_artist = Susan Shapiro & Nivia Gonzales
| cover_artist = Susan Shapiro, Nivia Gonzales
| country = [[USA]]
| country = USA
| language = [[English language|English]]
| language = English
| series =
| series =
| subject =
| subject =
| genre =
| genre = [[Short story|Short stories]]
| publisher = [[Random House, Inc.]]
| publisher = [[Random House]]
| pub_date = April 3, 1991
| pub_date = April 3, 1991
| media_type = Print ([[Hardcover]])
| media_type = Print ([[hardcover]])
| pages =
| pages = 165 pp.
| isbn = o-679-73856-8
| isbn = ISBN 0679738568
| oclc =
| oclc =
}}
}}


'''''Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories''''' is a book of short stories by renowned [[Chicago]]-based Chicana writer [[Sandra Cisneros]]. The collection reflects Cisneros's multicultural background of being raised in a country not quite her own, but is the only one she truly knows. As a reviewer noted, "taken together, these vignettes give a vivid, colorful picture of life on the Texas/Mexico border"<ref name="tager149">{{Harvnb|Tager|1991|p= 149}}</ref>, with characters "as unforgettable as a first kiss."<ref name="moorecampbell6">{{Harvnb|Moore Campbell|1991|p= 6}}</ref> ''Newsweek'' commended such genuine writing, saying "her feminist, Mexican-American voice is not only playful and vigorous, it's original—we haven't heard anything like it before".<ref name="prescott60">{{Harvnb|Prescott|1991|p=60}}</ref>
'''''Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories''''' is a book of short stories by [[Chicago]]-based [[Chicana]] writer [[Sandra Cisneros]]. The collection reflects Cisneros's multicultural background of being raised in a country that is not quite her own, but the only one she truly knows. As a reviewer noted, "taken together, these vignettes give a vivid, colorful picture of life on the Texas/Mexico border",<ref name="tager149">{{Harvnb|Tager|1991|p= 149}}</ref> with characters "as unforgettable as a first kiss".<ref name="moorecampbell6">{{Harvnb|Moore Campbell|1991|p= 6}}</ref> ''Newsweek'' commended such genuine writing, saying "her feminist, Mexican-American voice is not only playful and vigorous, it's original—we haven't heard anything like it before".<ref name="prescott60">{{Harvnb|Prescott|1991|p=60}}</ref>


These tales focus on the social role of women, and their relationships with the men and other women in their lives. The majority of the characters fall under stereotypes: men embody the machismo while women are naive and generally weak. Cisneros adds an obvious flavor of feminism to the stories, yet produces a feeling of sensitivity to the universal reality of immigrant life.
These tales focus on the social role of women, and their relationships with the men and other women in their lives. The majority of the characters fall under stereotypes: men embody machismo, while women are naive and generally weak. Cisneros adds an obvious flavor of feminism to the stories, yet produces a feeling of sensitivity to the universal reality of immigrant life.


Cisneros focuses on three feminine clichés: the passive virgin, sinful seductress, and traitorous mother. Not properly belonging to either Mexico or America, the Chicana protagonists earnestly search for their identity, only to discover abuse and shattered dreams. The book's sections coincide with three stages of life: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
Cisneros focuses on three feminine clichés: the passive virgin, sinful seductress, and traitorous mother. Not properly belonging to either Mexico or America, the Chicana protagonists earnestly search for their identity, only to discover abuse and shattered dreams. The book's sections coincide with three stages of life: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
The vignettes are quite short on average; the longest being 29 pages while the shortest doesn't reach 5 paragraphs. Despite such limited space, Cisneros experiments with daring stylistic techniques. Each story presents a new character with a unique voice in distinct literary fashion.
The vignettes are quite short on average; the longest is 29 pages, while the shortest is less than 5 paragraphs. Despite such limited space, Cisneros experiments with daring stylistic techniques. Each story presents a new character with a unique voice in distinct literary fashion.


==Background==
==Background==

Revision as of 14:53, 26 October 2008

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
Front cover
First edition cover
AuthorSandra Cisneros
Cover artistSusan Shapiro, Nivia Gonzales
LanguageEnglish
GenreShort stories
PublisherRandom House
Publication date
April 3, 1991
Publication placeUSA
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages165 pp.
ISBNISBN 0679738568 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories is a book of short stories by Chicago-based Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros. The collection reflects Cisneros's multicultural background of being raised in a country that is not quite her own, but the only one she truly knows. As a reviewer noted, "taken together, these vignettes give a vivid, colorful picture of life on the Texas/Mexico border",[1] with characters "as unforgettable as a first kiss".[2] Newsweek commended such genuine writing, saying "her feminist, Mexican-American voice is not only playful and vigorous, it's original—we haven't heard anything like it before".[3]

These tales focus on the social role of women, and their relationships with the men and other women in their lives. The majority of the characters fall under stereotypes: men embody machismo, while women are naive and generally weak. Cisneros adds an obvious flavor of feminism to the stories, yet produces a feeling of sensitivity to the universal reality of immigrant life.

Cisneros focuses on three feminine clichés: the passive virgin, sinful seductress, and traitorous mother. Not properly belonging to either Mexico or America, the Chicana protagonists earnestly search for their identity, only to discover abuse and shattered dreams. The book's sections coincide with three stages of life: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

The vignettes are quite short on average; the longest is 29 pages, while the shortest is less than 5 paragraphs. Despite such limited space, Cisneros experiments with daring stylistic techniques. Each story presents a new character with a unique voice in distinct literary fashion.

Background

The legend of La Llorona (Spanish for "weeping woman") is a ghost story found in Mexico and Texas. Woman Hollering Creek, a body of water just off Interstate 10 in Texas, is part of that same myth. The premise goes "a beautiful young woman named Maria falls in love and marries a handsome, rich boy, and their union is blessed with two sons and a daughter".[4] Soon after, the boy loses his affection for his wife. Maria, knowing that her husband doesn't love her, drowns their three children in the river and then herself. Upon reaching heaven, Maria is told that she can not enter until she has found her children. She is sent back to Earth where she wails sorrowfully for her babies. According to legend, any child that happens upon her ghost is pulled into the river and drowned. Other versions of this story are recognized throughout the world among the Aztecs, the Greek, the Spaniards, and found have found their way into Cisneros's work.

The book's name is taken from one of the stories called "Woman Hollering Creek", which focuses on a woman who is physically abused by her husband and feels drawn towards the near-by creek, but finds help in two strangers before she is led to do anything drastic. As Patricia Hart, in The Nation, cleverly, "anger repressed bursts the seams of life for Cisneros’ female characters, who struggle valiantly to make something beautiful from the ugly fabric fate has given them to work with".[5]

Growing up in Chicago as a Mexican-American sparked "the convergence of rootlessness and love that shaped [Cisneros's] family's history".[6] Cisneros was born into a family of seven children; she was the only daughter, which always left her to be singled out on account of gender.[7] Although there were enough siblings to go around, Cisneros always felt lonely as a child, thus prompting her to begin creating stories to vary the "dull routine of her life".[7] And as such, Madsen notes, "she creates stories, not explanations or analyses or arguments"; which in turn describe her feminist views with "more provisional, personal, emotional, and intuitive forms of narrative".[8] Madsen goes on to define this "Chicano feminism" as something that "has largely arisen from the need to contest the feminine stereotypes that define machismo, while at the same time identifying and working against the shared class and racial oppression that all chicanos/as....experience." [9]

Although such feminism is the background of many of the stories in Woman Hollering Creek, some critics say that "Cisneros has struggled to give voice to the female body within her feminine writing."[10] She appears to feel more of a connection to her writing than to any male figure in her life; "For her, men seem to be a utility that a woman turns on and off as required." [3] Cisneros "uses the behavior of men as a catalyst that propels her [female characters] into a search deep within themselves for the love that men have failed to give them."[2]

Plot Summary

Cisneros’ collection of stories, which are more like “verbal photographs, memorabilia, and reminiscences of growing up in a Hispanic milieu"[11] are divided into three life stages: "childhood innocence", troubled adolescence; and "turbulent adulthood".[12] These stages correspond directly with the titles of the book's three major sections: "My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn", "One Holy Night", and "There Was a Man, There Was a Woman".[13]

“Most of the stories include teasing, flirtatious exchanges, joking asides and minor secrets; some make deadly serious revelations. Their digressive and fragmentary nature highlights minor details and experiences, but more importantly it forces the reader to look around, to linger and remember”.[14]

The first section entitled, “My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn”, is comprised of seven vignettes that are like “tiles in a mosaic”.[1] These so called tiles “give a vivid, colourful picture of life on the Texas/Mexico border. [...] The stories are often about the romantic dreams of young girls longing to escape stifling small-town life who discover that things are not much different on the other side of the border”.[1] The short story, “Eleven”, is about a young girl who ends up “spill[ing] tears of shame over her humiliation by her teacher on her 11th birthday”.[15] In another narrative called “Barbie-Q”, Cisneros “tells us of the unadulterated pleasure two little girls feel when they come upon an unexpected prize”.[15]

The book’s second segment, “One Holy Night”, contains two short narratives focusing on preadolescents and young women who “evince a shared, uneasy awareness that their self-worth depends on a loyalty to Mexico strained, all the same, by the realities of their lives up North”.[16] The second of the two vignettes entitled “My Tocaya” is “about a friendship between two girls, one of whom disappears and is presumed dead until she appears at the police station, to the surprise of everybody in town”.[11]

In her book’s final section entitled, "There Was A Man, There Was A Woman," Cisneros illustrates “the need to join the female body with the political struggle against male oppression.”[12] The two female protagonists in “Never Marry a Mexican and “Eyes of Zapata” “turn to their bodies in an attempt to make sense of their displaced existences”.[12] These women are able to start articulating “their oppression and objectification”[12] which in turn reveals “how their identities have been shaped by the ways in which the men they "love" have capitalized on the sexual nature of their relationships”.[12] In the end, “their social roles as mistresses become the focal point in their ideological and political struggles for selfhood”.[12]

Characters

Cisneros bases most of her cast on stereotypes. As critic Ilan Stavans observes, “The image of Hispanic men, for instance, is grim and depressing: while the guys are always abusive, alcoholic, and egotistical, the girls are naive, doll-like, occasionally in control yet obsessed with how nature transforms itself, how relationships deteriorate, and how people escape their responsibilities to meet a different, although not a better fate.”[11]

There are three major feminine archetypes highlighted by Cisneros that represent Mexican womanhood. They are: "the passive virgin, the sinful seductress, and the traitorous mother".[17] These figures are portrayed in a few of Cisneros's stories as "La Malinche in 'Never Marry a Mexican,' the Virgin of Guadalupe in 'Little Miracles, Kept Promises,' and La Llorona in 'Woman Hollering Creek'".[17]

In "Never Marry a Mexican", the protagonist epitomizes the figure of La Malinche as she is "doomed to exist within a racial and class-cultural wasteland, unanchored by a sense of ever belonging either to her ethnic or her natal homeland".[18] The revenge achieved in this vignette by the protagonist, Clemencia, is not only sought for La Malinche, but for "all the women who are led to believe that marriage is the only mechanism by which their lives may be validated and if they are not married then they themselves are somehow invalid".[19]

Cisneros identifies with her own characters because they embody her existence, as Fitts wrote: "She must live on the fence because she can never occupy a full place in any of the cultures to which she nominally belongs. In the U.S., she is separated by her color, her language, and her history. In Mexican and Chicano societies, she is defined and limited by the traditions of machismo and the teachings of the Catholic Church."[20]

Themes

One of the major themes in the book is the social role of women. Critic Mary Reichart observes that in Cisneros's previous work as well as "in Woman Hollering Creek (1991), the female characters break out of the molds assigned to them by the culture in search of new roles and new kinds of relationships. Cisneros portrays woman who challenge stereotypes and break taboos, sometimes simply for the sake of shocking the establishment, but most often because the confining stereotypes prevent them from achieving their own identity."[21] McCracken observes the visible representation of the book and remarks that "the cover art, a painting by the Chicana artist Nivia González, ... is a polysemous text that simultaneously can work to confirm stereotypes of the Mexican woman as a folkloric figure for the other readers who lack in-depth contact with Mexican Americans".[22]

Another theme of the book is that of conflicting love and failed relationships between man and woman and also between mother and daughter. For example, critic Elizabeth Brown-Guillory notes of the story "Never Marry a Mexican" that it is about a "failed relationship between mother and daughter that has generational implications. [...] Cisneros portrays the mother as a destructive emotional force, alienating and condemning her daughter to repeating her own mother’s destructive powers." This failed relationship between daughter and mother also affects the ways in which women relate to men and “the story blames the mother for the failed relationships they have had with men.”[23]

Deborah L. Madsen asserts that Cisneros' "mixed ethnic background ... is reflected in the cultural hybridity that is one of [her] recurring themes".[24]

It is said that “in this sensitively structured suite of sketches, [...] Cisneros's irony defers to her powers of observation, so that feminism and cultural imperialism, while important issues here, do not overwhelm the narrative”.[16]

Style

This is a fictional book composed of short stories. "Cisneros dislikes length. Most of the entries are short: between one and fifteen pages."[11] Most of the book is written in the third person, and "[h]er style is candid engaging, rich in language".[11] Critic Madsen has said that "[t]he narrative techniques of her fiction demonstrate daring technical innovations, especially in her bold experimentation with literary voice and her development of a hybrid form that weaves poetry into prose to create a dense and evocative linguistic texture of symbolism and imagery that is both technically and aesthetically accomplished".[24] Madsen also commented that Cisneros uses "the strategies described in post-colonial theory as "counter-discourse" to engage and deconstruct the oppressive cultural narratives that are a legacy of Mexican America's colonial past".[25]

Reception

The book Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories was well received not only because Latin women could relate to the stories but all women of different cultures could relate. It is mentioned that "Cisneros surveys woman's condition-a condition that is both precisely Latina and general to women everywhere. Her characters include preadolescent girls, disappointed brides, religious women, consoling partners and deeply cynical women who enjoy devouring men. They are without exception strong girls, strong women."[3] Her work is said to be more than words is seen more as "a mosaic of voices of Mexican-Americans who joke, love, hate and comment on fame and sexuality [...] They are verbal photographs, memorabilia, reminiscences of growing up in a Hispanic milieu."[11]

One criticism is that Cisneros stereotypes men in her stories. Stavans argues that "the image of Hispanic men [...] is grim and depressing [...] the guys are always abusive, alcoholic and egotistical".[11]

The "La Llorona" story was adapted into a short film which was released in 1998.[26]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Tager 1991, p. 149 Cite error: The named reference "tager149" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b Moore Campbell 1991, p. 6
  3. ^ a b c Prescott 1991, p. 60 Cite error: The named reference "prescott60" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  4. ^ Van Ostrand 2008
  5. ^ Hart 1991, p. 598
  6. ^ Ganz 1994, p. 19
  7. ^ a b Madsen 2000, p. 106
  8. ^ Madsen 2000, p. 109
  9. ^ Madsen 2000, p. 108
  10. ^ Rojas 1999, p. 135
  11. ^ a b c d e f g Stavans 1991, p. 524
  12. ^ a b c d e f Rojas 1999, p. 136
  13. ^ Madsen 2000, p. 110
  14. ^ Brady 1999, p. 120
  15. ^ a b Gunst 1991, p. 23
  16. ^ a b Steinberg 1991, p. 76 Cite error: The named reference "steinberg76" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  17. ^ a b Fitts 2002, p. 11
  18. ^ Stoneham 2003, p. 244
  19. ^ Madsen 2000, p. 112
  20. ^ Fitts 2002, p. 11
  21. ^ Reichardt 2001, p. 59
  22. ^ McCracken 1999, p. 17
  23. ^ Brown-Guillory 1996, p. 164
  24. ^ a b Madsen 2000, p. 105
  25. ^ Madsen 2003, p. 5
  26. ^ La Llorona, Internet Movie Database, retrieved 2008-09-21

References

  • Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth (1996), Women of Color: Mother-daughter Relationships in 20th-century Literature, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, ISBN 978-0292708471.
  • Cisneros, Sandra (1991), Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, New York: Random House, ISBN 978-0394576541.
  • Hart, Patricia (May 6, 1991), "Babes in Boyland", The Nation, 252 (17): 597–598, retrieved 2008-09-21{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link). (EBSCO subscription required for online access.)
  • Madsen, Deborah L. (2000), Understanding Contemporary Chicano Literature, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 978-1570033797.
  • Madsen, Deborah L. (2003), "Introduction: American Literature and Post-colonial Theory", in Madsen, Deborah L. (ed.), Beyond the Borders: American Literature and Post-Colonial Theory, London: Pluto, pp. 1–5, ISBN 978-0745320458.
  • McCracken, Ellen (1999), New Latina Narrative: the feminine space of postmodern ethnicity, Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, ISBN 978-0816519415.
  • Prescott, K. (June 3, 1991), "Seven for Summer", Newsweek, 117 (22): 60, retrieved 2008-09-26{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link). (EBSCO subscription required for online access.)
  • Reichardt, Mary (2001), Catholic Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, Westport, CT: Greenwood, ISBN 9780313311475.
  • Stavans, Ilan (September 13, 1991), "Una nueva voz", Commonweal, 118 (15): 524, retrieved 2008-09-21{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link). (EBSCO subscription required for online access.)
  • Stoneham, Geraldine (2003), "U.S. and US: American Literatures of Immigration and Assimilation", in Madsen, Deborah L. (ed.), Beyond the Borders: American Literature and Post-Colonial Theory, London: Pluto, pp. 238–244, ISBN 978-0745320458.
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