Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories

First edition cover
Author	Sandra Cisneros
Cover artist	Susan Shapiro, Nivia Gonzales
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre	Short stories
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	April 3, 1991
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	165 pp.
ISBN	ISBN 0679738568

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories is a book of short stories published in 1991 by San Antonio-based Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros. The collection reflects Cisneros's experience of being surrounded by American influences while still being familially bound to her Mexican heritage as she grew-up north of the Mexico-US border.

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 are stereotypes: men embody machismo while women are naive and generally weak. 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. Apart from focusing on these issues of struggling females, Cisneros simultaneously develops the readers' sensitivity towards the lives of immigrants.

The vignettes are quite short on average; the longest is 29 pages, while the shortest is fewer than five paragraphs. Despite such limited space, Cisneros experiments with daring poetic prose in her storytelling; for example, cach story presents a new character with a distinct literary voice and style.

Background

From early on, 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. 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. 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.

After many years of writing, Cisneros now uses Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories to explore the failed relationships of the female characters via their reactions to the men in their lives. This feminine focus in the stories may reflect Cisneros's own views on relationships, as she doesn't appear to have a strong connection to any male figures in her life: "For her, men seem to be a utility that a woman turns on and off as required." 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. Cisneros "creates stories, not explanations or analyses or arguments", which describe her feminist views with "more provisional, personal, emotional, and intuitive forms of narrative".

An example of her feminine focus is found in the short story "Woman Hollering Creek", which concentrates on a woman who is physically abused by her husband and feels drawn towards the nearby creek. She becomes depressed and sits beside the water with her new baby, contemplating how a woman could be driven crazy. Cisneros developed this tale, which has also been found slightly modified in Aztec, Greek, and Spanish cultures, from the legend of La Llorona (Spanish for "weeping woman"), a ghost story found in Mexico and Texas.. In the myth, "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". Soon after, the boy loses his affection for his wife. Maria, knowing that her husband no longer loves her, drowns their three children in the river and then herself. Upon reaching heaven, Maria is told that she cannot enter until she has found her children. She is sent back to Earth, where she wails sorrowfully for her children. According to legend, any child that happens upon her ghost is pulled into the river and drowned. The real Woman Hollering Creek, a body of water just off Interstate 10 in Texas, is the river which Cisneros mentions in her story. Fortunately, the protagonist in "Woman Hollering Creek" is rescued from her abusive husband by two strangers before she goes mad.

Plot summary

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories is a collection of short stories, most of which are between one and fifteen pages in length. For example “Salvador Late or Early” and “There Was a Man, There Was a Woman” are only one page long while “Eyes of Zapata”, the longest story, is twenty-eight pages long. Cisneros' collection of stories is divided into three sections. The first, which focuses on the innocence of the characters during childhood, is called “My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn". The following section—"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 during their tumultuous adulthood.

“My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn” is a short story about an unnamed narrator and her best friend Lucy Anguiano, the “Texas girl who smells like corn”. This vignette offers a snapshot into life just north of the United States-Mexico border for two girls who are presumably of Mexican descent. Lucy's home is portrayed as a low-income, Mexican-American family. Her mother is overworked and busy with many children while her father is rarely around. However, the story focuses on the freedom that the girls have when no one of authority is watching; for example, waving at strangers, jumping on mattresses, scratching mosquito bites, picking scabs, and somersaulting in dresses.

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. 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. He lies to her about belonging to ancient Mayan royalty, seduces her, and then abandons her, only to return in an attempt to kill her. In her youth and naivety, Ixchel desires 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", Clemencia, the Chicana protagonist of the story “Never Marry a Mexican”, experiences rejection by her white lover. She takes revenge on this man by luring his naïve son into a lover’s role, and makes it known that in due time, this young man will inevitably pay for his father’s transgressions.

Characters

Cleófilas, the Mexican protagonist of the title story “Woman Hollering Creek", moves to Texas as the new wife of Juan Pedro. She dreams of a life filled with the love and romance found in telenovelas, only to discover that she has married an abusive and unfaithful husband. In her growing desperation, she relates to the story of La Llorona and the despair that drove this mythical woman to destruction. However, instead of giving in to this despair, “Cleófilas neither drowns nor abandons her children. Instead, she saves them and herself" by relying on the aid of her father in Mexico and two Mexican American ladies, Felice and Graciela who help her escape.

Clemencia is the Chicana protagonist of "Never Marry a Mexican", whose life choices can be related to those of the historical figure La Malinche, an indigenous woman who befriended the Spanish Conquistadors in the 1500s. Both La Malinche and Clemencia were mistresses to men of a different ethnicity than their own, "doomed to exist within a racial and class-cultural wasteland, unanchored by a sense of ever belonging either to [their] ethnic or [their] natal homeland". Clemencia's final revenge in this vignette is not only a triumph in the memory of La Malinche, but also for the women who feel that their value depreciates if they do not have a husband.

Lucy Anguiano, the childhood friend of the narrator in “My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn”, is a Texas girl from a family with nine children, an exhausted mother and an absent father. She influences the narrator’s desire to share in the unadulterated and simple pleasures that childhood can bring."

Ixchel, the self-named protagonist of “One Holy Night”, is a young teen who ignorantly gives herself to a captivating, yet dangerous 37-year-old lover. Over time, she realises that she has been seduced by a mass murderer but remains unable to reconcile herself with the fact that she is still in love with him."

Chayo, is a character who writes the last prayer note in “Little Miracles, Kept Promises”; a collection of letters in Cisneros’ book, from Mexican Americans to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico who symbolizes female virginity. Chayo’s letter provides a contrast between the Virgin of Guadalupe and La Malinche. She illustrates the difficulties of living as a modern Chicana with her religious, race and gender beliefs being constantly challenged. In attempts to free herself from being caught in between her modern day Chicana lifestyle and her Mexican heritage she begins to redefine who she is as a woman. In order to do this Chayo must accept that she is not quite malinche or virgin and she does this by acknowledging “the Virgin's pacifism and Malinche's sexuality through knowledge of her own Indian heritage”.

Themes

There are many themes which we can find in the book, but some that are recurring are Roles in society, relationships, and also hybridity of both ethnicities American and Mexican. Within these short stories, Cisneros concentrates on the identities which women appropriate as a result of relationships and how these are connected with their roles in society. 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." An example of this is Cleófilas, who by coming to the United States learns that life is very different from those she saw in the telenovelas. She learns there is more to woman than being a wife and a mother, that there are more possibilities that she can pursue while she still remains faithful to her religious beliefs. Another example of this is found in the final section of this book, entitled "There Was A Man, There Was A Woman", where Cisneros illustrates how women can use their bodies as political instruments in their attempts to fight against male domination. The two female protagonists in "Never Marry a Mexican" and "Eyes of Zapata" use their bodies in attempts to gain recognition and acceptance from husband and lover. However, in doing so, they face the problems of objectification and oppression; two issues which end up adversely shaping the characters’ identities. In the end, the illegitimate societal roles of these women influence their quest for female identity.

The protagonists are examined not only as individuals, but also by how they connect to people in their lives, such as the conflicting love and failed relationships between man and woman; 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, as the mother is left at fault for any problematic situations with the daughter's male companions.

After the experience of growing up within two cultures, Cisneros was able to combine both ethnicities, and in her stories she develop a major theme of hybridity between the American and Mexican culture. 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.” Because these issues are complex, Cisneros does not try to resolve all of them. Instead, she attempts to find neutral ground where the characters can try to meld their Mexican heritage with an American lifestyle, without feeling homesick for a country which, in some cases, the women have not even been to.

Although the book has recurring themes like feminism and cultural imperialism, Cisneros uses her power of observation so her stories and narrative are not overwhelmed by these themes.

Style

Cisneros displays an abundance of poetic prose which uses frankness to captivate an audience. As you read her book, reviewer Susan Wood suggests, you see that "Cisneros is a writer of power and eloquence and great lyrical beauty." Critic Madsen has said that "the 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". Madsen emphasizes Cisneros's creative ability to combine both prose and poetry; she also changes her narrative mode according to the demands of the story. For example, her narrative point of view almost continually changes, sometimes using first person, as we see in the story “Little Miracles, Kept Promises”, and sometimes third person, as in “La Fabulosa: a Texas Operetta”. Additionally, the technique of interior monologue dominates the story “Never marry a Mexican”. Another unique aspect of her writing is that "Cisneros's stories are full of Spanish words and phrases. She clearly loves her life in two worlds, and as a writer is grateful to have 'twice as many words to pick from ... two ways of looking at the world.' A sometime poet, Cisneros uses those words so precisely that many of her images stick in a reader's mind. Of two people kissing, for instance, she writes: 'It looked as if their bodies were ironing each other's clothes."

Reception

Before we look at how the book was received, we should look at a very important point. Woman Hollering Creek was published by Random House. This is note worthy because “despite the growing number and influence of Latinos in the USA, the only identifiably Latin’s names–with a few exceptions like Oscar Hijuelos–on books published by major houses are those translations of Latin American novels”. Thus having Cisneros's new book published by Random House is noteworthy.

Once the book was published Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories was well-received because women of many 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." 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."

Marcia Tager says that Cisneros “writes with humour and love about people she knows intimately”

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".

References

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• 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.

• Fitts, Alexandra (January 2002), "Sandra Cisneros's Modern Malinche: A Reconsideration of Feminine Archetypes in Woman Hollering Creek", The International Fiction Review, 29 (1–2): 11-22, retrieved 2008-10-05{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link).

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• 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.

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• 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.

• Rojas, Maythee G. (1999), "Cisneros's "Terrible" Women: Recuperating the Erotic as a Feminist Source in "Never Marry a Mexican" and "Eyes of Zapata"", Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 20 (3): 125–157, retrieved 2008-09-29{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link). (JSTOR subscription required for online access.)

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• Wyatt, Jean (November 1995), "On Not Being La Malinche: Border Negotiations of Gender in Sandra Cisneros's "Never Marry a Mexican" and "Woman Hollering Creek"", Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 14 (2): 243–271, retrieved 2008-09-26{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link). (JSTOR subscription required for online access.)

• Wood, Susan (June 9, 1991), "The Voice of Esperanza. Review of Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories"", The Washington Post: 3{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link). (JSTOR subscription required for online access.)