The end of Woman Hollering Creek

I know this is a few days late, but I just finished the book today I thought it better to write about it when I had finished it in entirety. I must say that I agree with Jon on enjoying the first half more. I was very impressed with several of the earlier stories including "Salvador Late or Early," "One Holy Night," and "Woman Hollering Creek." All of these stories were written beautifully and poetically and had a certain truth or 'from the heart' quality that resonated very well with me. They were written powerfully but did not seem in any way over the top. Some of the latter stories however did seem a bit over the top, namely "Eyes of Zapata." I will give her credit for the interesting premise to write a story on. Everyone who knows anything about Mexico or Mexican history has that image of Zapata as an iconic figure somehow engrained in their mind. Most people have a sense of Zapata as a heroic and revolutionary man who fought for the rights of the poor and disenfranchised in Mexico. However, I think Cisneros was trying to comment on the fact that for the most part, it is males who dominate people's notion of history and females are largely left out of this narrative. For this reason, she was giving voice to the female side of the story and perhaps suggesting that females did not have the agency in those times to leave such a mark on history as their male counterparts. What I found problematic about this story however was the language and style of writing. It really felt over the top and I could almost not take it seriously. There seemed to be an element of shock value, and also one of self pity that made it hard for me to identify with the story or the character from whose voice the story was told.

I found the story, "Never Marry a Mexican," to be both shocking and contradictory to many of the characters in the rest of the work. This women seemed to be representative of all of the qualities that the other characters lacked. She strongly pitted herself against the institution of marriage and never wanted to fall into the category of being dependent upon a man. Although she seemed somewhat empowered in this sense, she still seemed to be one of the most miserable characters in the book. She still managed to be deeply hurt by the man she fell in love with and in response, did hurtful things to others. Perhaps Cisneros is pointing out the double edged sword that comes along with love; on one hand, to let yourself become dependent and weak can lead to complete loss of power and heart ache, but letting yourself be deeply unattached can also lead one to the same point.

In the defense of the second half of the book, I really enjoyed the last story, "Bien Pretty." I thought this story exemplified well the concept of authenticity or not quite fitting in fully to either the Latin or American cultural category. Flavio was portrayed as the 'authentic' Mexican who spoke Spanish as a native language and represented all things that were truly Mexican. Lupe on the other hand seemed to somehow be straddling the border between both cultural categories of identity. She was not as Mexican as the Mexicans and not as American as the Americans. It seemed to be in light of this, she almost compensated for this by commodifying what she felt was the Mexican image. There are many lists of things in this story, "(8) Oaxacan black pottery pieces, signed Diego Rivera monotype, upright piano, star-shaped piñata, (5) strings of chile lights...."(139). It felt to me as if in order to make up for this feeling of lack of 'authentic' Mexican identity, she surrounded herself in things that seemed representative of this identity.

All in all, I was very impressed with this book.