Sandra Cisneros creates a magnificent description of the struggles that children go through in her novel, Woman Hollering Creek. The children in her stories experience unfortunate events, which will affect their future. In “Eleven”, “Barbie Q” and “Mexicans” she tells the stories of three little Hispanic girls who are part of the lower class. The girls are seen differently because they are not the “ideal” Americans. Throughout the stories they learn important lessons and values for their adulthood.
In the story “Eleven”, an eleven-year-old girl, Rachel, learns that she is not eleven, but instead she is the years that make her. According to Cisneros, Rachel feels likes “some days [she] might need to sit on [her] mama’s lap because [she’s] scared, and that’s the part of [her] that’s five” (Cisneros 6). She knows that her actions show how emotionally old she is. Unfortunately, she wished she were one hundred and two so that she could have given Mrs. Price a proper response. Instead of speaking up, she mumbled and was forced to wear the hideous red sweater who nobody claimed. Once she wore the sweater it caused her to cry because of the unfairness of having to wear a germ-infested sweater that did not belong to her. According to Rachel, crying is a sign of being three years old, which caused her to look like a three year old. This traumatizing event made her feel like she had no voice, since no one believed her word. Even the teacher opposed her by believing Sylvia when she accused Rachel of being the owner. She automatically believed that Sylvia made sense, since it looks like something Rachel would wear, according to the students and teacher. This was unfair for Rachel during the day she turned eleven. Unfortunately, this event caused her to be invisible and destroyed her birthday that she was looking forward to. This event will affect Rachel in her future as an adult. For example, her social life might have been ruined which causes