Cristina Garcia Critical Analysis

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.

Castillo Bueno, Maria De Los Reyes, and Daisy Rubiera Castillo. Reyita: The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2000. Print.

Richard Blanco, a famous Cuban-American poet who became the first Latin American, immigrant, and openly gay Inaugural Poet in 2013, wrote a variety of works based off his life and all the things that were going on in it. In Richard Blanco’s, “El Florida Room” and “The First Real San Giving Day”, Blanco provides the readers with a look into his personal life with information about his family and some characteristics of his life. Dealing with many different societal issues due to his culture and even his sexual orientation, Blanco describes what his life was truly like, more specifically geared towards his culture; being Cuban-American. Through his use of a chronological storytelling in his memoir and a reflection on the past in his poem,

The novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez, illustrates these challenges. Throughout the novel, we see how different aspects of culture shock impact the Garcia family. In this essay I will discuss how particular events change each family member’s Dominican cultural values and identity.

Caminero-Santangelo, Marta. 2007. On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

One of the main sources of tension in How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, written by Julia Alvarez, are the sisters search for a personal identity among contrasting cultures. Many of the characters felt pressure from two sources, the patriarchal culture that promotes traditional gender roles and society of nineteen-sixties and seventies America. Dominican tradition heavily enforces the patriarchal family and leaves little room for female empowerment or individuality, whereas in the United States, the sixties and seventies were times of increasingly liberal views and a rise in feminist ideals. This conflict shaped the identities of the characters in Alvarez’s novel and often tore the characters apart for one another.

Judith Ortiz Cofer a Latin American author of short stories, poetry, autobiography, young adult fiction, and essays, as a young child migrated to Mainland America from Puerto Rico with her family, moving into an apartment complex with other people of Latin descent. Although, she spent most of her years in the Continental U.S. her writings are reflective of the strong latin heritage that her mother undoubtedly instilled in her from a young age. This is clear in her short story “Nada” where the narrator makes references to the hispanic community that live at an apartment complex in New Jersey. Cofer’s style of writing and experiences in her life are brought out in this story as well as many more of her writings. She includes some Spanish words throughout the story and ideals of the hispanic culture.

Mrs. Garcia is a middle age Mexican American woman, first generation acculturation into the societal beliefs

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.

A life in the city of Seguin, Texas was not as easy as Cleofilas, the protagonist of the story thought it would be. The author, Cisneros describes the life women went through as a Latino wife through Cleofilas. Luckily, Cisneros is a Mexican-American herself and had provided the opportunity to see what life is like from two window of the different cultures. Also, it allowed her to write the story from a woman’s point of view, painting a vision of the types of problems many women went through as a Latino housewife. This allows readers to analyze the characters and events using a feminist critical view. In the short story “Women Hollering Creek” Sandra Cineros portrays the theme of expectation versus reality not only through cleofilas’s thoughts but also through her marriage and television in order to display how the hardship of women in a patriarchal society can destroy a woman’s life.

When one visualizes Latino culture, the prevalent images are often bright colors, dancing, and celebrations. This imagery paints a false portrait of the life of many Latino’s, especially those that are forced to leave their home countries. Latinos often face intense poverty and oppression, whether in a Latin country, or a foreign country, such is true in Pam Ryan’s novel Esperanza Rising. Ryan chronicles the issues that many Latino immigrants face. The first is the pressure from the home country. Many of the countries face turmoil, and many are forced to leave their homes and culture. Once in a foreign place, people often struggle with standing by their own culture or assimilating to the new culture. Latino authors frequently use young adult literature as a platform to discuss the issues they face, as young adults are coming of age they struggle with their identities, personifying the struggle of old culture against the new culture.

Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban tells the story about three generations of a Cuban family and their different views provoked by the Cuban revolution. Though part of the same family, an outsider might classify them as adversaries judging by relationships between one another, the exiled family members, and the differentiations between political views. Although all of these central themes reoccur over and over throughout the narrative, family relationships lie at the heart of the tale. The relationships between these Cuban family members are for the most part ruptured by any or a combination of the above themes.

Rivera begins her paper by simply giving the reader a list of many of the works Denise Chavez has written during her literary career. It is through this list

In “The Youngest Doll”, author Rosario Ferre brings to light the oppressive treatment of many women in Puerto

Two of the most widely recognized major contributors to Latin American Literature are Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Isabel Allende’s Eva Luna. Both are written in the genre of magical realism, a literary form that describes fantasy and imaginary events in such a way that it becomes believable and real to the reader. Specifically, these books describe the geopolitical turmoil of Latin America during the early twentieth century and the mid twentieth century; respectively, dealing with war, suffering and death. Although the authors are of different genders, both of these books are written from a feminist perspective and merge fantasy with reality by introducing the reader to myths, prophecies, and legends that