Analysis Of Leslie Marmon Silko's Yellow Woman

The story “Woman Hollering Creek" by Sandra Cisneros describes the lives of Mexicans in a Chicago neighborhood. She depicts the life that women endure as Latino wives through her portrayal of the protagonist, Cleofilas. For Cisneros being a Mexican-American has given her a chance to see life from two different cultures. In addition, Cisneros has written the story from a woman’s perspective, illustrating the types of conflicts many women face as Latino wives. This unique paradigm allows the reader to examine the events and characters using a feminist critical perspective.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to show how women undergo oppression by gender roles. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman’s changes in mental state. The narrator in this story becomes so oppressed by her husband that she actually goes insane. The act of oppression is very obvious within the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and shows how it changes one’s life forever.

The book that I decided to read was Night Flying Woman by Ignatia Broker. The tribal identity in the book was Oibwe from the White Earth Band. Ms. Broker started out the book from the present day in Minneapolis where she grew up. There wasn’t much culture to be seen, and the younger generations were getting too lost in the new world. Ms. Broker made sure to mention that she still taught her children the Ojibwe ways, and told them the stories that her grandmother had once told her. Throughout Ignatia Broker’s introductory chapter, we got a sense of the amount of respect she had for you great-great grandmother Oona, or Night Flying Woman.

Social standards may confine individuals from pursuing their own personal interests. Through the relationship between societal standards and individual interests, Sandra Cisneros’ short story, “Woman Hollering Creek,” introduces the roles of men and women in a Hispanic culture. The protagonist, Cleofilas Hernandez, is trapped in an abusive relationship with her newly-wed husband, Juan Pedro. However, Cleofilas tolerates the toxic relationship due to the social norms of her society, which reveals that the Hispanic culture revolves around a patriarchal society and that women have to be submissive to their husbands. As the story progresses, Cleofilas abandons the gender norm to lead an independent lifestyle.

Many were forced to evacuate to other regions within the country and endure the infamous Trail of Tears. While Native Americans are not forcibly removed from their homes anymore, this story shows a modern-day example of mistreatment or borders that Native Americans deal with. While the mother faced many different conflicts, externally and internally, she readily accepts the challenge and is not willing to step down. She displays the pride of the Blackfoot Indians and is not willing to let the government tell her who she is and let them define her. She sets an example for Native Americans, standing up against a government that has held them down for so long. That they should always have pride in who they are, and where they came

　　Natalie Diaz's debut collection, When My Brother Was An Aztec, is a book of poems that accounts Diaz's skills in imaginative and lyrical language. The collection explores her past in unexpected form and images, tackling the subjects of her family, most notably her meth addicted brother, life on the reservation, and being a Native American woman. In this collection Diaz has filled the pages with rich and interesting images that rely on Native American culture, experiences of her own as a Native American woman, and mythology. As I read this collection I was struck by how heavy her images rested on the page and yet how weightless they seemed to fly off.

In Grice’s essay, he introduces us to many key characteristics of the black widow. He goes into intricate detail about the spider’s habits and how they are inexplicably powerful. Grice then relates this creature’s tendencies with the unnecessary evils of today, “Evolution sometimes produces flowers of natural evil traits that are neither functional nor vestigial but utterly pointless” (Paragraph 14) Grice, through

Waterlily by Ella Cara Deloria tells the story of a young woman, Waterlily, and her family as they experience the every-day life on the prairie as Oceti Sakowin. Through the clever storytelling of Waterlily’s childhood, Deloria’s novel covers the Oceti Sakowin family life, camp circle, ceremonies, hunts, war parties, and the introduction of white presence in the Midwest. Themes of reverence for tradition and honoring of beings and nature span the book; however, the story also exceptionally demonstrates the Oceti Sakowin way of life in a way that illuminates many of the beautiful pieces of the Oceti Sakowin culture. Waterlily displays two particularly significant aspects of the Oceti Sakowin culture: kinship and generosity.

Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Never Marry a Mexican” deals heavily with the concept of myth in literature, more specifically the myth La Malinche, which focuses on women, and how their lives are spun in the shadows on men (Fitts). Myths help power some of the beliefs of entire cultures or civilizations. She gives the reader the mind of a Mexican-American woman who seems traitorous to her friends, family and people she is close to. This causes destruction in her path in the form of love, power, heartbreak, hatred, and an intent to do harm to another, which are themes of myth in literature. The unreliable narrator of this story was created in this story with the purpose to show her confusion and what coming from two completely different

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver is a fiction about a girl named Taylor who grew up poor in Kentucky and moves to Arizona by herself. While driving she acquires an unexpected indian child. She learns how to be a mother and how to take care of herself at the same time. The story’s main theme is feminism because Taylor and women in the story were put down by men but stood up for themselves and she shows she is strong and just as powerful as a man.

Throughout the novel The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, the past is incorporated into the present through talk-stories combined into each chapter. Kingston uses talk-stories, to examine the intermingling of Chinese myths and lived experiences. These stories influence the life of the narrator as the past is constantly spoken about from the time she is young until the novel ends and she becomes an adult. Kingston incorporates two cultures. She is not a direct recipient of Chinese culture, but she has her own sense of talk-story, that she learns from her mother, which tells the old Chinese stories with a sense of myth, in a new American way. This is a way of weaving two cultures together, bringing the Chinese past into her present American life.

    Leslie Marmon Silko is a Native American from New Mexico and is part of the Laguna tribe.  She received a MacArthur "genius" award and was considered one of the 135 most significant women writers ever.  Her home state has named her a living cultural treasure.  (Jaskoski, 1)  Her well-known novel Ceremony follows a half-breed named Tayo through his realization and healing process that he desperately needs when he returns from the horrors of World War II.  This is a process that takes him back to the history of his culture.

The next poem “Loose Woman” by Sandra Cisneros is also about a woman with all these stories

At the age of fourteen, the nameless protagonist meets Old Chief Mshlanga on a walk with her dogs, a native tribal leader who used to own the whole area. The chief's pride and respect make the girl gingerly change her opinion of natives and reconsider her prejudiced vision and idea. As a result, she begins to be more pleasant towards the natives she encounters.

The mobs that abandon the old man are very fickle. Just as fans are in reality, they desert one fad for another. The lady spider is a new fad, and the old man suddenly seems ordinary in comparison to her.