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Deborah L. Madsen asserts that Cisneros' "mixed ethnic background ... is reflected in the cultural hybridity that is one of [her] recurring themes".<ref name="madsen105">{{Harvnb|Madsen|2000|p= 105}}</ref>she “ depicts the situation of the Mexican-American woman: typically caught between two cultures, she resides in a cultural borderland. The topics of the stories range from the confusions of a bicultural and bilingual childhood to the struggles of a dark-skinned woman to recognize her own beauty in the land of Barbie dolls and blond beauty queens.” <ref>{{Harvnb|Fitts|2002|p= 11}}</ref> Even though these themes and issues are complex, Cisneros does not try to resolve all these issues, instead she tries to “search for a "place" that will respect Spanish and Indian heritage along with Mexican tradition without resorting to a nostalgic longing for a distant motherland (a Mexico that, in some cases, the characters have never seen). Her characters engage in a continual process of cultural mediation, as they struggle to reconcile their Mexican past with their American present.”( Alexandra Fitts)
Deborah L. Madsen asserts that Cisneros' "mixed ethnic background ... is reflected in the cultural hybridity that is one of [her] recurring themes".<ref name="madsen105">{{Harvnb|Madsen|2000|p= 105}}</ref>she “ depicts the situation of the Mexican-American woman: typically caught between two cultures, she resides in a cultural borderland. The topics of the stories range from the confusions of a bicultural and bilingual childhood to the struggles of a dark-skinned woman to recognize her own beauty in the land of Barbie dolls and blond beauty queens.” <ref>{{Harvnb|Fitts|2002|p= 11}}</ref> Even though these themes and issues are complex, Cisneros does not try to resolve all these issues, instead she tries to “search for a "place" that will respect Spanish and Indian heritage along with Mexican tradition without resorting to a nostalgic longing for a distant motherland (a Mexico that, in some cases, the characters have never seen). Her characters engage in a continual process of cultural mediation, as they struggle to reconcile their Mexican past with their American present.”( Alexandra Fitts)


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".<ref name="steinberg76">{{harvnb|Steinberg|1991|p= 76}}</ref> So, she still showed important factors but maintained it a intresting narrative instersting.
Even though the book has reoccurring themes like gender relationships and culture Cisneros uses her power of observation so her stories and narrative are not overwhelmed by these themes.<ref name="steinberg76">{{harvnb|Steinberg|1991|p= 76}}</ref>


==Style==
==Style==

Revision as of 02:56, 2 November 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.

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 poetic prose in her storytelling. Each story presents a new character with a distinct literary voice and style.

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".[1] 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. Cisneros takes this tale, which has also been found slightly modified in Aztec, Greek, and Spanish cultures, and incorporates it into her 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.

A bond ran throughout Cisneros's family as a result of being separated from their homeland and having to live as Mexican-Americans in Chicago.[2] 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.[3] Although there were enough siblings to go around, Cisneros always felt lonely as a child, thus prompting her to begin creating stories to vary her daily routine.[3]

Deborah Madsen writes that Cisneros "creates stories, not explanations or analyses or arguments", which describe her feminist views with "more provisional, personal, emotional, and intuitive forms of narrative".[4] As the writing is from a Mexican-American immigrant's point of view, this feminism contends not only with the stereotype of gender, but of class and race as well.[4] Although such feminism is the background of many of the stories in Woman Hollering Creek, Maythee Rojas argues that "Cisneros has struggled to give voice to the female body within her feminine writing."[5] Cisneros explores the failed relationships of her female characters via their reactions to the men in their lives.[6]She appears to feel more of a connection to her writing than to any male figure: "For her, men seem to be a utility that a woman turns on and off as required."[7]

Plot summary

Cisneros' collection of stories, are divided into three sections. The first, which focuses on the innocence of the characters in their childhood, is called “My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn". The following section entitled "One Holy Night, includes two short stories highlighting the troublesome adolescent years of its characters. The final section called, “There Was a Man, There Was a Woman”, concentrates on characters in their tumultuous adulthood.[8]

One of the stories, having the same title as the first section, entitled “My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn” is about an unnamed narrator and her best friend Lucy Anguiano, the “Texas girl who smells like corn”.[9] This vignette gives a little snapshot into life just north of the US-MX border for two girls who are presumably of Mexican descent. The story touches on Lucy’s family which portrays a typical low income, Mexican American lifestyle, where the overworked mother, is busy at home with her many children and the father is never around. However, the main focus is on the freedom that the girls have to do whatever they want when no one of authority is watching; things like: waving at strangers, jumping on mattresses, scratching mosquito bites, picking scabs, somersaulting in dresses, and waving at strangers.[10]

The book's second segment, "One Holy Night", contains two short narratives focusing on adolescent females and the way their self-worth is affected by the tension of remaining loyal to Mexico while integrating into the American lifestyle.[11] The title story “One Holy Night” introduces the reader to a young teenage girl, Ixchel who, in her quest for true love, meets a 37 year old man named Chato. This man lies to her about belonging to ancient Mayan royalty, seduces her, and then abandons her only to return in attempts to kill her. The protagonist throws caution to the wind in her desire to be romanced by someone with alleged Mexican roots, only to be disappointed by the reality of having fallen in love with a Mexican American serial killer.

In the 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."[8] 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".[8] These women are able to start articulating "their oppression and objectification"[8] 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".[8] In the end, "their social roles as mistresses become the focal point in their ideological and political struggles for selfhood".[8]

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."[12]

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".[13] 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'".[13]

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".[14] 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".[15]

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."[16] Although these segregations exists for Cisneros, her characters struggle with relationships which could be part of any culture.

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."[17] An example of this is Cleofilas who by coming to the states learns that life is very different from those she saw in the telenovelas. She learns there is more to woman that being a wife and a mother, that there are more possibilities that she can pursue while she still remains faithful to her religious beliefs. [18]

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" "Cisneros portrays the mother as a destructive emotional force, alienating and condemning her daughter to repeating her own mother’s destructive powers." This unsuccessful 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."[19]

Deborah L. Madsen asserts that Cisneros' "mixed ethnic background ... is reflected in the cultural hybridity that is one of [her] recurring themes".[20]she “ depicts the situation of the Mexican-American woman: typically caught between two cultures, she resides in a cultural borderland. The topics of the stories range from the confusions of a bicultural and bilingual childhood to the struggles of a dark-skinned woman to recognize her own beauty in the land of Barbie dolls and blond beauty queens.” [21] Even though these themes and issues are complex, Cisneros does not try to resolve all these issues, instead she tries to “search for a "place" that will respect Spanish and Indian heritage along with Mexican tradition without resorting to a nostalgic longing for a distant motherland (a Mexico that, in some cases, the characters have never seen). Her characters engage in a continual process of cultural mediation, as they struggle to reconcile their Mexican past with their American present.”( Alexandra Fitts)

Even though the book has reoccurring themes like gender relationships and culture Cisneros uses her power of observation so her stories and narrative are not overwhelmed by these themes.[11]

Style

This is a fictional book composed of short stories. "Cisneros dislikes length. Most of the entries are short: between one and fifteen pages."[12] Most of the book is written in the third person, and "[h]er style is candid engaging, rich in language".[12] 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".[20] 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".[22]

Reception

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories was well received because not only Latin women, but women of different cultures could relate to the stories: "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."[7] For Stavans, the stories are not just words, but "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."[12]

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".[12]

Film Adaptation

The "La Llorona" which is a legend used in Cisneros book was adapted into a short film which was released in 1998.[23]

Notes

  1. ^ Van Ostrand 2008
  2. ^ Ganz 1994, p. 19
  3. ^ a b Madsen 2000, p. 106
  4. ^ a b Madsen 2000, p. 109
  5. ^ Rojas 1999, p. 135
  6. ^ Moore Campbell 1991, p. 6
  7. ^ a b Prescott 1991, p. 60
  8. ^ a b c d e f Rojas 1999, p. 136
  9. ^ Cisneros 1991, p. 3
  10. ^ Cisneros 1991, p. 5
  11. ^ a b Steinberg 1991, p. 76 Cite error: The named reference "steinberg76" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  12. ^ a b c d e Stavans 1991, p. 524
  13. ^ a b Fitts 2002, p. 11
  14. ^ Stoneham 2003, p. 244
  15. ^ Madsen 2000, p. 112
  16. ^ Fitts 2002, p. 11
  17. ^ Reichardt 2001, p. 59
  18. ^ Fitts 2002, p. 11
  19. ^ Brown-Guillory 1996, p. 164
  20. ^ a b Madsen 2000, p. 105
  21. ^ Fitts 2002, p. 11
  22. ^ Madsen 2003, p. 5
  23. ^ 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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