Analysis Of Liliana Heker's The Stolen Party

Stereotypes are dangerous weapons in our society. “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” is a short essay in which the award winning poet and professor of English, Judith Ortiz Cofer, wishes to inform and persuade the audience that labels and stereotypes can be humiliating and hurtful. The author targets the general public, anyone that doesn’t understand that putting someone in a box because of a stereotype is wrong. Cofer starts out the essay by telling the reader a story with a drunk man who re-enacted “Maria” from the West Side Story, and how angry that made her feel. She continues by explaining how she grew up in the United States being a Puerto Rican girl trying to fit in, but always being labeled as an island girl. Cofer carries on by explaining why Latin people get dressed and act a certain way. Then she recalls some more stereotypical incidents.

Overall, this novel proved itself to be a story of hope and liberation. The way in which Equality 7-2521 repeatedly showed actions and thoughts of opposing the society, and how he finally came to the conclusion that the modern society is deprived and wanted to change it, shows that this story is not about despair. Although readers don’t truly know if Equality’s goal to make a better future for the world was achieved, his display of independence, want for freedom, and plans to change the world, left a feeling of hope. Equality 7-2521 sought liberation and a future in which humans were free to be independent. Likewise, a famous phrase in the real world says, “De oppresso liber”-- meaning to “liberate the

Heker, Liliana. “The Stolen Party”. Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing About Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. Frank Madden Ed 5th: New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2012. 403-407. Print.

Throughout the history of mankind, change has remained a constant. Men and women continually strive to improve their lives and enact changes that enable them to better their quality of life. Our world’s history is compromised of these efforts by man to enhance society, through political, economic, and social changes, which are further documented through the cultural outputs of a society. The poets Roger Bonair-Agard and Gloria Anzaldua encapsulate the calls for change in a society through their works “how do we spell freedom – the weusi alphabeti method” and “El sonavabitche”, respectively. Though the two poets wrote on vastly different subjects, both authors employed literature as a medium for their call for activism in society and expressed discontent with the dominance of western culture over minority groups. Through their utilization of formal elements including imagery, diction, and narrator, both poets call for action to change the mindset that the imposition that American society holds over other groups of people.

Cultural expectations have prevented humans from being able to lead their own lives the way they see fit. Gloria Anzaldúa and Sandra Cisneros are two notorious Mexican-American writers that wrote extensively about cultural borders and expectations. Anzaldúa came from the Mexico-Texas border, was a cultural and feminist theorist as well as English scholar, while Cisneros also comes from a Latino background and speaks from her cultural hybridity to illustrate cultural expectations. In this paper, I will use Anzaldúa’s “Borderlands / La Frontera” as a lens for Cisnero’s short story, “Woman Hollering Creek” to draw connections of cultural and gender expectations between two different genres of text.

Currently Sandra Cisneros resides in San Antonio in a purple house and she describes herself as “nobody’s mother” and “nobody’s wife.” Both Frida Kahlo’s and Cynthia Y. Hernandez’s works convey the idea of having one’s culture limit one’s freedom and individuality. Cisneros and Esperanza are both victims of this idea and realize that the only way to live one’s life freely is to defy the roles and limitations created by one’s culture.

For centuries, a great deal of ethnic groups have been disempowered and persecuted by others. However, one should realize that none are more intense than the oppression of women. In the novel, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, women living in the Mango Street neighborhood suffer from their restricted freedom. Three such women, Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally, provide great examples. All try to escape from their dreadful environment. Most of them fail, but at first, Sally seems to succeed in escaping from her father. However, she ends up meeting a husband as equally bad as her father. Ultimately, the men who live with Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally act as insuperable obstacles that limit the freedom in their women’s lives.

From the start the novel is laden with the pressures that the main characters are exposed to due to their social inequality, unlikeness in their heredity, dissimilarity in their most distinctive character traits, differences in their aspirations and inequality in their endowments, let alone the increasingly fierce opposition that the characters are facing from modern post-war bourgeois society.

The first issue that many Latino author’s address is the problems in many Latin American countries. In Esperanza Rising Esperanza’s family faces the backlash of the Mexican revolution. Esperanza’s family has land in Mexico which makes them a target for many unhappy citizens in Mexico. Esperanza’s mother has to explain to her that, "the wealthy still own most of the land while some of the poor have not even a garden plot. There are cattle grazing on the big ranches, yet some peasants are forced to eat cats" (Ryan, 25). Eventually Esperanza’s father is murdered by bandit’s and they are forced to leave the dangerous country. Mexico is not the only place with major issues. Young Adult literature often reaches into the historical hardships of other Latin countries, such as the dictators of the Dominican Republican in Julia Alvarez’s novel Before We Were Free. Alvarez talks about the distrust of the police, stating “Back home, [her father] had been tailed by the secret police for months and the family had only narrowly escaped capture their last day on the Island” (Alvarez 233). Young Adult literature reflects this often as a background story, forcing the protagonists into the environment they are in. As well, it frames the families’ mindset and the hardships many have faced before

   In Liliana Heker’s story, "The Stolen Party," the young child Rosaura is hurt because she is a victim of a class structure which keeps the rich on the top and people like her and her mother at the bottom of society. By the end of the story Rosaura will have learned a very important lesson in class structure which, because it is so traumatic for her, she will carry with her for the rest of her life.

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because she too is a victim like many others in the play, but is the

In a perfect world we would all live together in peace. But we don’t live in such a world. In Liliana Heker’s story "The Stolen Party" we are reminded of the real world and the thin line that separates the lower class from the upper class. In an instant we see all the discrimination and inhumane treatment some people feel they have a right to inflict on those whom they consider "not one of them."

The aim of this essay is to address the problem of inequality and oppression through three separate texts, The Second Sex, The Death of the Profane and Killing Rage. The Second Sex focuses on the woman and her role compared to man. The Death of the Profane and Killing Rage are both texts that describe experiences about the constant racism felt by blacks. To thoroughly examine these texts and how they are related to oppression and inequality it is important to first define what each mean. Oppression and inequality each have different definitions but they go hand in hand. Oppression is the state of being subject to prolonged unjust treatment. While inequality is defined as lacking equality, equality is the state of being equal especially in status,

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