Tag Archives: week9

11/5/21

The bodies

What struck me most from Garza’s introduction to the book “Grieving” was one specific paragraph on the second page that starts with “What we Mexicans…”. The repetition of bodies was so impactful to me because she described all the different ways that these people’s bodies had been violently assaulted. They were burned, tossed, disappeared, unclaimed, persecuted, airless, and missing many of their parts. I found this paragraph to do two things:

Firstly, it described in detail just how they were found. There is no filter to the violence, instead, it is honest and direct about it. Normally when acts of violence are talked or written about, the gory details are left out or downplayed as they might be too much for the audience, but the author makes a point of putting their point across: these people were violently assaulted and it should be spoken about. There is a modern version of mass murders happening, which she likens to that of Auschwitz and Armenia, and its time that people accept this. The repetition of “bodies” is impactful and sets a tone for the rest of the book.

Secondly, the consistent repetition of “bodies” demonstrates just how many there are. This reminded me of a concept I’ve heard of which is that humans find it very hard to grasp very large numbers. Not only that, but we also tend to become desensitized to death when it’s published in these large numbers. It is a reaction our brain has when it’s exposed to situations that might cause grief or trigger strong emotions. These tragedies have been happening in Mexico for so long that the author could be trying to bring awareness to the problem and individualize these people and what has happened to them. Rather than saying that there were 20 bodies found, she describes each and every one of them to emphasize that they are not just a number, but that they were murdered and that they deserve justice.

11/4/21

The Pointlessness of Intervention

The pointlessness of intervention is referred to on multiple occasions by Regan, the narrator. Despite knowing about her mother’s scheme to trick Cleis’ father, she “[doesn’t] say anything” due to her belief that she wouldn’t be listened to (pg. 1). Regan feels skeptical about the multimillionaire wanting to marry a small-town girl, but once again, “[doesn’t] say anything” because all the single girls are already excited over the announcement (pg. 2-3). Notably, when Cleis tells her stepmother that the multimillionaire is “not the gentleman he pretends to be,” Regan does not back up her statement (pg. 5). Rather, she mentions the stepmother’s stubborn certainty in believing that “the girl had brought it on herself,” implying that she would be impossible to convince otherwise (pg. 5). The pointlessness Regan refers to is indicative of a feeling that she is unable to change outcomes and opinions; rather, the opinions of the townspeople appear to Regan to be set in stone. The current social dynamics in the town (i.e., abuse, gendered violence) give the impression that they cannot be easily changed with words and that it is perhaps hopeless for someone like her to try to change them. To Regan, it takes a special kind of person (such as Cleis) to overcome these dynamics. This sort of exceptionalism serves to provide a glimmer of hope yet also causes Regan to put herself down. At the end of the story, Regan is still “observing life with [her] owl eyes,” implying that she has chosen to continue her lack of intervention (pg. 5).

11/4/21

A Twisted Tale

“Cinderella’s Secret Dream” by Ena Lucia Portela is based on the famous fairy tale, “Cinderella.” There are many twists and differences from the original fairy tale. Where the original fairy tale is set in the medieval period, this version is set in more modern times (maybe the 1990’s). Cleis (Cinderella) does not want to marry that multimillionaire (Prince Charming) due to him being more abusive. Cleis also dreams of being an actress in a soap opera instead. As a result of that and her taking one of her step-sisters’, Lotta’s shoes, Lotta gets the prince. Cleis’ step-sister, Lotta, is murdered by the multimillionaire. The step-mother then goes insane after the loss of her daughter. The prince dies in a helicopter crash after getting away with murder, thanks to his many lawyers. The overall story is more shocking than the original.

How do the twists affect the story? Everyone and their moms have already heard some form of the classic fairy tale many times before, so Portela had to try and make this version more original. Most of these twists don’t happen until the end of the story, when the multimillionaire hosts the party. With these twists, Portela makes the story more engaging and provocative. These changes to the story makes Cleis seem more independent and relatable than Cinderella. They also make the ending quite bittersweet. Cleis gets her dream job, but Lotta and the prince die, while the step-mother is in an insane asylum.

11/4/21

The War on Children

The horrors of mutilated dead bodies on display in a city are real and severe. I lived in Mexico though 2005-2016. Personally, I had never witnessed any of these bodies. However, some of my friends had. They never really explained it or spoke about it, but you could tell their demeanor had changed. Stories of children being kidnapped and ransomed by the cartel were also fairly common. No one I knew, but friends of friends of friends. The threat was real, but I never really understood the extent of it.

There were some moments in which it became clearer. I would see military vehicles often on my way to school. They served as a reminder of the war on drugs. Even 10-year-olds knew there was a high likely hood the government officials were on their payroll. Being a kid I didn’t pay much attention to it outside of when it directly affected me or those I knew. My parents did a good job of sheltering me from it. 

Reading Rivera’s depiction of the horrors and terrorism of the cartel-run state, my perspective has been broadened. I haven’t really heard stories with any first-person perspective or with vivid imagery until this reading. To a degree, I resented the lack of freedom I had as a kid. It was difficult for me to understand why I couldn’t go to the Oxxo (the dominant corner store chain in the country) a few blocks away from my compound with my friends. The claimant open-end my eyes as to the fear my parents had given the situation. The poem oozes the sorrow and grief the mother must feel and I have grown thankful for my parent’s protection of me. Poems can help make sense of your own life.

11/4/21

No More Fairy Godmother

In Ena Lucia Portela’s story, there is a simultaneous representation of and divergence from the norms of fairy tale story telling. The deviation from the norms ultimately works to tell a story of female empowerment.  The big division from norms of fairy tales that we see in this telling of Cinderella, is the absence of the fairy godmother character. In this version of the story, Cleis is the one who provides the means for herself to attend the party, by buying her own dress (page 3). The absence of a magical character that solves all the problems of the heroine is a clear choice in displaying the capability of Cleis, and places more responsibility on her choices and actions. Further representing this independence and power in Cleis free will comes her ending. She accomplishes her initial dream of being an actress, and play the role of the villainess (page 2). This too diverges from genre norms, in the desire of the main character to be bad instead of good.
Both of these help to create a new kind of heroine, if we can even call her that. This new kind of character abides by her own free will, apart from the stepmothers control – but even then is still acting in accordance with her own agency, but now walks the line between hero and villain. This transition creates an idea that in order to be an independent woman, you must be a little bit of a villain. All villains work for their own motive and end goal, in order to be a strong willed woman, you too must be just a little bit of a villain inside.

11/4/21

Fairy Tales – A Symbol of What?

Portela’s short story took me by surprise, as I did not expect a fairy tale inspired story to emerge in the context of this class, but it left me wondering much about the cultural context of fairy stories. In the story, the fairy tale seems to serve a few purposes. First, it is an easy way to subvert an expectation – by priming the reader with Cinderella, the darkness and reality of the story feel much more vivid. Second, it allows the story to do something interesting with narration. Though the revelation that the narrator is a character in the story is surprising regardless of genre if done right, the fairy tale genre is unique in its rigidity for narration. In a given work of literary fiction, one can expect the narrator to do pretty much anything, but in a fairy tale, the narrator is quite narrowly expected to either be omniscient, or to be retelling the story orally from a point further in time than the tale. In Portela’s work, Regan’s narration feels jarring because a fairy tale is meant to be an act of story-telling, not something real and personal. Third, though further research is needed to verify this point, it seems that using the fairy tale alludes to a western, and perhaps Disney-specific “violent innocence”. Cinderella is something one might heavily associate with Disney and America, and though the story itself is innocent and harmless, the culture it represents can be seen to be quite violent. Using this story in such a way thus infiltrates this genre and reveals the violence within it. The story takes something supposedly innocent from an imperialistic culture, and infiltrates it with the violent reality of its own culture.

Though I’m quite confident of the relationship between the story and its genre, I find myself wondering about the ideology of fairy tales. Though associating them with Disney makes the answer easy, seeing them in their wider context makes it much more complex. The European-ness of fairy tales somehow does not feel very harmful, but rather quite whimsical, like one might see a lederhosen or a Scottish quilt. On the other hand, they can be very dark, and they hold within some very western tropes. I would be interested to learn more of how fairy tales fit into the picture of modern ideology, because I have difficulty making sense of what they now represent.

11/4/21

Looking the Other Way

Throughout Cinderella’s secret dream women are shown as unhelpful to other women, even at the beginning Cleis’ stepmother hates her for being more beautiful than her and the descriptions of other women are unkind. This shows how women enforce beauty standards on each other. When Regan sees Cleis in the garden during the party she does not attempt to help her, she just watches as the businessman tries to grab her. It seems like she doesn’t want the violence to be redirected at her, it is accepted as long as it’s happening to someone else. This is also seen when Cleis goes to her stepmother for money to leave, the stepmother doesn’t believe her and thinks that she must have brought it upon herself somehow. The story shows how often the victim is blamed for the violence and that when it is so ingrained in society it is easier to look the other way rather than acknowledge what is happening.

11/4/21

from constraints to control

A big theme within this unit on Gendered Violence seems to be the notion of “escapism.” We see this in Santos-Febres’ Broken Strands, where Yetsaida wants to  escape not only her looks (her curly hair, which she thinks is “ugly” and “limiting”) but also her hometown, to move to Miami. Likewise, Cleofilas in Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek wants to escape her entire life – her husband, his abuse, the town in which they settled. She does this by watching telenovelas as a form of escapism, and then by physically leaving, too. In Cinderella’s Secret Dream, Cleis also longs for an escape from her daily life under the oppression of her stepmother, as well as from the town in which she lives – her dream is to be an actor, playing the role of the “bad girl” as a way to escape the obedient, submissive role she has played in her own life thus far. In all three of these readings we encounter this longing for “something else.”

I think this reflects a longing to not only escape their circumstances, but also to exert agency over their own lives. As women, Yetsaida, Cleofilas and Cleis have been subject to the constraints placed around them by their fathers, brothers, husbands, and society at large. Yetsaida’s desire to pursue hair school in Miami, and Cleis’s pursuit of her acting career, are ways in which they can shake the yoke of suppression at the hands of their father and stepmother, respectively. For Cleofilas, fleeing her town means taking control of her situation where her father, husband and society had always exerted control. Thus, not only is this recurring theme of “escapism” reflective of a need to literally flee a situation; it represents these womens’ reclamation of agency, decision-making and control over their own lives.

11/4/21

My Body Belongs to the State

Through the excerpts of Grieving, Cristina Rivera voices the tiredness of simply existing in a state whose interests lie in the profit of your suffering (pg. 22). As Mexican citizens, our dignity, and sovereignty are robbed through violent means to enrich a few. Our path is laid out before even being born, our body will not belong to us but to the Mexican Narco-State. We do not get to dictate our safety and define our bodily autonomy. Instead, violence infiltrates both public and private spheres. There is no corner of Mexico where one can isolate from corruption and its exercise of violence. Equally, there is no corner where justice can be found (pg. 21). Furthermore, we do not hold ownership over our labour, and we are constantly robbed of self-sufficiency (pg 4-5). Thus, the State simultaneously deprives us of justice while not allowing us to access alternatives outside State structures (pg. 4). Our integrity and bodily autonomy are non-existent, and despite the different cycles of historical and political contexts, the outcome is the same: our bodies do not belong to us. The body is the most personal and only ‘guaranteed’ form of ownership that follows us until death. Yet, the Mexican Narco-State and corrupted allies have found ways in which to infringe our last resort of dignity.  

Additionally, intersecting gender identities further creates the helplessness that Rivera speaks about. The State embodies patriarchal and capitalist notions of power, which trickle down to everyday violence, with women and gender non-conforming identities being primary targets. We are defenceless to the State’s “Why Should I Care?” attitude (pg. 5). While providing the example of Señorita Signatory, Rivera says, “her organs were a question of the state” (pg. 20). Although the example is from 1939, 80 years later, the conditions in which Mexican society finds itself are the same. Our bodies and the autonomy associated with simply ‘being’ are continually violated to accommodate State interests while leaving the rest of us in an agonizing state of survival. 

11/4/21

A Lotta Violence for a Fairy Tale

In “Cinderella’s Secret Dream”, the intrusive narrator provides a unique perspective that casts both Cleis, as Cinderella, and the billionaire, as the prince, in a new light. As the narrator, Regan portrays Cleis positively, highlighting her beauty and tenacity, while constantly criticizing her mother, her sister Lotta, and even herself. Cleis, whose character is traditionally submissive⁠—mostly accepting how she is treated and only passively dreaming of a better future⁠—now actively works towards her “one-way train ticket” (2) to a new life. Likewise, the millionaire is no Prince Charming; rather, he assaults Cleis and murders Lotta⁠.

In this version of the story, the stepmother’s cruelty becomes part of the backstory and the role of the antagonist is shifted to the millionaire, yet unlike in typical fairy tales, he faces virtually no consequences. Cleis, at least, stands up for herself and is able to escape the town and begin a career elsewhere, but little attention is paid to Lotta’s suffering. Only two paragraphs are dedicated to explaining her death, which, on a whole, is brushed aside casually. In contrast to Cleis’s success, Lotta’s murder is never truly avenged (though the millionaire later dies in a helicopter accident, this is an unrelated incident and does not bring a sense of justice being served). Even more unnerving is Regan’s description of her own sister’s death, with which she holds the same attitude that she has towards her sister’s murderer.

Despite Cleis’s unconventional happy ending subverting genre expectations, the narrative ultimately stays within the confines of a society that has normalized the existence of femicides and gender-based violence. The exploration of these topics within a typically lighter genre, and the way they are integrated so as to unsettle readers without taking away from the focus of the Cinderella plot, leaves a stronger impact on the audience.