Woman Hollering Creek By Sandra Cisneros

Thesis: In the short story “Woman Hollering Creek,” Sandra Cisneros emphasizes the importance of having a female figure to look up to in order to overcome the oppression women are subjected to in a patriarchal society.

In the story, Cleofilas has always thought that if a man ever strikes her, she would strike back. However, as the story progresses, Cleofilas starts to endure her husband’s abuse. The first time Juan Pedro hits her she is too surprised to even shed a tear or try to defend herself (Cisneros, 1991, p.249). Cisneros wants to address domestic violence because many women feel helpless when they are in controlling and abusive circumstances. Moreover, a controlling and abusive relationship causes a great deal of tension and unhappiness, which Cleofilas experiences throughout the story.

She doesn't know being beaten by her husband is not a normal thing. She is living in the suburbs with her husband with neighbors who in their own way, are trapped as well. Cisneros also shows how life can be for Cleofilas when a mom is not present to guide heir, again, Cleofilas's only guide are the television series. "The creek, the televonelas and the border define the mythic spaces given to Cleofilas in her fantasies of escape from a battering husband."(Mullen 6) The town which Cisneros chose to have as the setting of the story, there isn't much for her to do;" in the town where she grew up, there isn't much to do except accompany the aunts and godmothers to the house of one or the other to play cards."(Cisneros 44) Using that, Cisneros helps the reader to get a taste of how the environment is. An environment which women don't have a say in, an environment where woman don't have the equal power as men; the environment Cleofilas was raised in.

Unlike animals, humans are able to observe past the mere monochromatic vision of survival. We have an impeccable ability to desire more than just living to breed, and breeding only to someday perish. Thus, we gradually brush this canvas with the colours of ethics, control, and knowledge. Whether the colours fade or become prominent through time, this canvas becomes our perception of normality and we allow it to justify our actions; favorable or harmful. We, as well as the narrator in the short story The Hunt by Josephine Donovan represent this. However, because of the narrator’s difference in perception, self-indulgence, and greed for power, the story introduces a feeling of infuriation to the reader.

Clo grew up in a time when the gender roles for Mexican women were more traditional and her father really only expected her to get married and not much else. Her father actually arranged for her to be married to a wealthy man that was her father’s age. All Clo wanted to do was go to art school in Paris but her father ignored her pleas. On the day of the wedding, Clo came down the stairs naked and embarrassed her father so much so that he sent her away to the art school in Paris with money to help keep her away.

Based on Cisneros’ works of literature, gender roles in a Hispanic culture revolves around patriarchal rule. The repercussions of a patriarchal rule includes the limitations of female liberation and development. Cleofilas’ abusive situation exemplifies the limitations of her independence and development as she can not make her own decisions and has to solely depend on her husband. This situation is illustrated when Cleofilas explains that the towns are “built so that you have to depend on husbands... You can drive only if you’re rich enough to own and drive an own car. There is no place to go” (Cisneros 628). Cleofilas reveals that men are the dominant gender and have more authority, and that women are compelled to depend on them in her society. It is an exceptionally rare case that a woman can afford her own car, for the men usually control the finances in a household. Additionally, Cleofilas has nowhere to seek refuge from her husband. Although she yearns to return to her father’s home, she decides not to due to the social standards imposed on her. In her society, the act of returning home after marriage is socially unacceptable. She understands that her family will be viewed in a negative light if she were to return home, as seen when Cleofilas refers to her town as a “town of gossips” (627). Similar to other men in the society, Juan Pedro’s authority is shown through his abuse. Cleofilas recalls, “He slapped her once, and then again, and again; until the lip split and bled an orchid of blood” (626).

The poem “Mothers and Daughters” is written by Pat Mora. Pat Mora is a contemporary award winning writer, who writes for children, youngsters and adults. She was born in El Paso, TX in the year 1942. She attains a title of a Hispanic writer; however, the most of her poems are in English. In her literary work, one can observe the different aspects of the immigrants’ lives such as language issues, family relationships, immigrants’ experiences and cultural differences (1187).

She uses the literary element, theme, to describe this. The theme of the story is the feeling of disaffection. Also, the story discusses how Cleofilas’ husband Juan abuses her and it first she thinks nothing of it, because she feels that “to suffer for love is good”. But the more she thinks about it she gets to a point where she gets fed up with it and plans a way to leave her husband and go back to Mexico with her father. Cleofilas talks Juan into taking her to her doctor appointment. When in the doctors’ office, her doctor knows exactly what happened and helps her escape. She takes a bus back to Mexico to her

hese women from the book “ Women Hollering Creek”, were abused and taken advantage of their own men. Sandra Cisneros explores the stories “Never marry a mexican”, Woman Hollering Creek”, and “One holy night”. The women in this stories made a mistake by being with the wrong men in their life. They became careless when they met their own men. These girls have lost their respect for themselves. They have destroyed their own self, for the guy who never really loves them. No one stood up for their rights as a woman. Love and hate made these women vulnerable.

Cisneros’ family bounced back and forth between Mexico and the United States for most of her youth, which led to firsthand experience in the difficulties of growing up as a multicultural person (Doyle. 54-55). As an adult, she settled in San Antonio, Texas, but that feeling of not belonging to either culture never left her. She drew on this feeling as inspiration for many works, including “Woman Hollering Creek,” a short story about a Mexican woman, named Cleofilas, brought to live in the United States by her new husband. She is excited to leave her lazy brothers and old-fashioned father behind, and dreams of the endless possibilities that

The Canadian novel ‘Crow Lake’ by Mary Lawson, published in 2002, was awarded in Canada as First Novel Award in the same year it was published and won the McKitterick Prize in 2003. The author Mary Lawson was born and brought up in a small farming community in southern Ontario. After graduating from McGill University, she moved to England in 1968. She still lives there with her husband and sons, though she returns to Canada every year. The story took place in a small town called Crow lake in northern Ontario. In this book Kate Morrison, the main character, leads the reader through her journey for healing from past mistakes dealing with her family. At the beginning, Kate who is seven, and her siblings Luke, Matt, and Bo, experienced a tough time surviving after their parents were killed in a car crash, which impacted them for the rest of their lives.

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.

Writing in the 20th century was great deal harder for a Chicano then it was for a typical American at this time. Although that did not stop this author, Sandra Cisneros. One of her famous novels, Woman Hollering Creek was a prime example of how a combined culture: Mexican-Americans, could show their pride and identity in this century. In conjunction, gave the opportunity for women to speak their voice and forever change the culture of Latino/a markets. Not only did it express identity/gender roles of women and relationships, but using these relationships to combine the cultures of Mexican and American into a hybrid breed. This novel, should have been a view-point for the future to show that there is more to life than just gender and race.

Woman Hollering Creek is a book of short stories published in 1991. The author, Sandra Cisneros, separated her book into three sections. The section that will be analyzed is the first section where the narrators are female children. Out of the many stories in section one, the three that will be focused on are, "Mericans," "My Friend Lucy Who Smells Like Corn," and "Barbie-Q." The children in these three stories are all lower class, Mexican-American females. These stories have been described by Thompson as Cisneros remembering her childhood, filled with no male figures, lack of close female friendships, and poverty (415-417). Each story shares both similar themes and different

She said this though she was Mexican too. But she was born here in the U.S, and he was born there, and it’s not the same, you know” (Cisneros 68). This also shows Clemencia’s boundary living. In an interview with Aranda, Sandra Cisneros dramatizes the double unbelonging through Clemencia’s inability to function in either Anglo or Mexican discourse (Wyatt). With the imagery portrayed of both sides of the border, the reader can clearly imagine exactly what Clemencia’s mother means with this statement.