Preview

Woman Hollering Creed

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1375 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Woman Hollering Creed
Morgan Sneed
ENGL2006

Sandra Cisneros is an American writer best known for her first novel The House on Mango Street and her subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Her work experiments with literary forms and investigates emerging subject positions, which Cisneros herself attributes to growing up in a context of cultural hybridity and economic inequality that endowed her with unique stories to tell.
Cisneros's early life provided many experiences she would later draw on as a writer: “born in Chicago, the child of a Mexican father and a Mexican American mother, Cisneros spent parts of her childhood in Texas and Mexico (1130).” Cisneros's work deals with the formation of Chicana identity, exploring the challenges of finding herself caught between Mexican and American cultures, facing the misogynist attitudes present in both these cultures, and experiencing poverty. For her insightful social critique and powerful prose style, Cisneros has achieved recognition far beyond Chicano and Latino communities. Using her position as an educator and writer, she began “to champion Chicana feminism, especially as this movement combines cultural issues with women’s concerns (1131)”. In Woman Hollering Creek, Cisneros “cultivates a sense of warmth and naïve humor for her protagonists, qualities that are evident in introductory parts (1130).” This short story collection deals with the issues that young women faced. “What remains constant is the author’s view that by romanticizing sexual relations women cooperate with a male view that can be oppressive, even physically destructive…Ciseneros is ‘caught between here and there’. Yet ‘here’ and ‘there’ are not as dichotomous as young versus old, female versus male, or Mexico versus the United States (1130).”
Woman Hollering Creek is a tale of tragedy and triumph. The story, told from the third person, begins by showing us the foreknowledge our protagonist Cleofilas’s father held

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The story “Woman Hollering Creek” is about a woman named Cleófilas, a lover of telenovelas, who married a man named Juan Pedro Martínez Sánchez. At first, Cleófilas thought her life would be perfect and follow the same structure such as the telenovelas she watched once she married a man. However, it was the exact opposite because she had married an abusive man who would cheat on her. When she was taken to the hospital with her second child, the nurses saw the signs of abuse and one of the nurses, Graciela, called her friend Felice to take Cleófilas back to Mexico to her father. As Cleófilas was on her way, she was fascinated by Felice and made her happy to be away from her husband.…

    • 1309 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Josie Mendez-Negrete’s novel, Las Hijas de Juan: Daughters Betrayed, is a very disturbing tale about brutal domestic abuse and incest. Negrete’s novel is an autobiography regarding experiences of incest in a working-class Mexican American family. It is Josie Mendez-Negrete’s story of how she, her siblings, and her mother survived years of violence and sexual abuse at the hands of her father. “Las Hijas de Juan" is told chronologically, from the time Mendez-Negrete was a child until she was a young adult trying, along with the rest of her family, to come to terms with her father 's brutal legacy. It is a upsetting story of abuse and shame compounded by cultural and linguistic isolation and a system of patriarchy that devalues the experiences of women and girls. At the same time, "Las Hijas de Juan" is an inspirational tale, filled with strong women and hard-won solace found in traditional Mexican cooking, songs, and storytelling.…

    • 1851 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    "Woman Hollering Creek" by Sandra Cisneros is a story of a wife who lives in a cycle of abuse from her husband. Cleofilas, a woman with unrealistic views of love, and Juan Pedro, her husband, move from Mexico to Seguin, Tejas, near a little arroyo called La Gritona. Cleofilas bears Juan Pedro a son, Juan Pedrito. Then one day Juan Pedro beat Cleofilas, but afterwards she was so stunned that she forgave him that "time and each." Cleofilas starts to suspect that Juan Pedro is committing adultery and that he's plotting to kill her. Therefore, before going to see the doctor about her unborn child she decided that she would ask for help. Graciela, a nurse or doctor, calls her friend to see if she could give Cleofilas a ride to the bus station in San Antonio. Felice, Graciela's friend, picks up Cleofilas and her child to take them away from their miserable life. The central idea of "Woman Hollering Creek" is that a person can escape the cycle of family violence if they want to.…

    • 298 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This week's readings involved introductions to problems faced by the Chicano community. It depicts how far back these cultural problems have arose and how the community continues to struggle and overcome it. For example, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it is a historical document stating peace, friendship, limits, and settlement for the people of Mexico and the United States. This treaty was drafted in 1848, which ended the Mexican-American War, in hopes for a better relationship between the two countries. In contrast, in the poem, I am Joaquin, the poet brings light how the treaty is broken and how the Chicano people and all people represented in the poem are oppressed socially, economically, culturally, and politically, by the "Gabachos".…

    • 165 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    "Esperanza. I have inherited [my great grandmother's] name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window." Young Esperanza's opening thoughts in Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street begins with the introduction of a surprisingly insightful disadvantaged Hispanic girl named Esperanza, who has just moved into a poor Latino neighborhood. Esperanza's opening remarks foreshadow a theme that continues to develop throughout the entire novel, cumulating piece by piece until a complete puzzle is produced. As Cisneros' Mango Street chronicles an emotionally pivotal year in the life of a young girl, the author herself presumably draws on personal experiences of being raised in an environment in which she struggles and feels like she does not belong. It is evident that Cisneros creatively expresses her own experiences in her writing, and goes so far as to dedicate the book "a las Mujeres," or to the Women. Though not purely biographical, striking similarities of race and background exist between the author and narrator such that Cisneros…

    • 1599 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Woman’s Hollering Creek,” the main character is a young Mexican girl; who is experiencing, for the first time, what she believes to be love. However after getting married and leaving her “town of dust and despair,” (Cisneros 1592) she soon realizes that she took her home for granted. Cisneros includes multiple spots in her story to show Cleofilas’s transfer from a sheltered princess to finally having her eyes opened to reality.…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The House On Mango Street, this is a book with drama, action, sorrow, and some happiness. The book by Sandra Cisnero,. has a lot to do with being a Mexican American. Now I do not know what it's like to be a Mexican American and how back in this time period they were treated, but how the explains not the best.…

    • 464 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The work of fiction House on Mango Street is written by Sandra Cisneros. It shows the dreams of Esperanza, a little girl who lives on Mango Street, an impoverished area of Chicago. She likes writing and wants to be an author. Both Alicia and Esperanza view education and writing as a pathway to better life. Through these characters, the author suggests that education would offer a kind of freedom.…

    • 494 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Anzaldua

    • 411 Words
    • 2 Pages

    When analyzing Gloria Anzaldua’s writing “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” it is important to look at her background. She comes from a very diverse background; her parents were immigrants, she was born in south Texas, and she identifies herself as a Chicana feminist. The different discourse communities seen through her writing is the struggle she has between the different languages she has to adapt to around different people in her life. Writing from the borderlands between American, Mexican, Spanish, Indian, Chicano, and Mestiza culture, Anzaldua creates a representation of the wide range of forces within herself and the culture from which comes.…

    • 411 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    House on Mango Street

    • 832 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In 1984 Sandra Cisneros wrote the novella The House on Mango Street based on the narrator, Esperanza’s, first year living on Mango Street. A young Latino girl, by the name of Esperanza, is growing up in the suburbs of Chicago and is determined to leave her life on Mango Street in her past. In this novella Cisneros explores the effect of loss of innocence on Mango Street. The roles of women and how they treat each other is highly prominent in The House on Mango Street. Throughout Esperanza’s year on Mango Street she begins to realize that women have a responsibility to not harm each other but to help.…

    • 832 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Two stories that are abundant with feminist views and stereotypes are Cisneros' Barbie-Q and My Tocaya. In both stories, we see characters struggle with what it means to be a woman. Cisneros explores the standards women are held up to, and the standards they make for themselves. Cisneros does a wonderful job of bringing out the worries, fears, and Otherness that women frequently grapple with in their daily lives. She writes her tales, all the while reflecting and dismantling stereotypes of women. Cisneros, when participating in a project titled Interviews with Writers of the Post-Colonial World, stated: "I guess my feminism and my race are the same thing to me. They're tied in one to another, and I don't feel an alliance or allegiance with upper-class white women" (Jussawalla, Dasenbrock, 74).…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The House on Mango Street shows the reader the life of a Mexican-American girl through the character's eyes. Only, the story isn't just about her ethnicity and poor environment, it's about finding a home and growing up. Everybody could learn a lot from her. She teaches people of determination, inner strength, and connections that can't always be explained. Cisneros' vignettes read like individual stories with one big purpose and that in itself is beautiful.…

    • 478 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The House On Mango Street and “ Only Daughter” both prove that being an Mexican- American women is a struggle. As Cisneros shows her first hand experience, and as well shows it through story telling. Yet without telling a biography and going straight to the point she shows emotion by using literary elements. Sandra Cisneros Chose to use metaphors and imagery to express the hard ships of being a Mexican- American women. If Sandra Cisneros did not use literary elements to show the lifestyle of a Mexican-American women, the points that she showed in both the texts would not have been as powerful as they were.…

    • 543 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Mango Street Essay

    • 261 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Throughout history, women have been seen as inferior to men. In the novel, The House On Mango Street, the main character, Esperanza sees many examples of women who are treated lower by their husbands. These women are imprisoned in their own homes on Mango Street. The author, Sandra Cisneros uses the motif of Imprisoned Females to show that women have been seen as inferior to men.…

    • 261 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Patriarchic society instills this self-hatred into Chicanas by embedding their worthlessness into the foundation of society itself. “Chicanas’ negative perceptions of ourselves as sexual persons and our consequential betrayal of each other find their roots in a four-hundred-year-long Mexican history and mythology” (39). This self-hatred is institutionalized by the creation of a myth that justifies the…

    • 1291 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays