Sandra’s Cisneros’ writing style is certainly a unique one. She utilizes a wide variety of techniques to establish her voice, and the individual voice of the characters in each story. I like how the beginning of the book is united with the child-like viewpoint, manifesting in the slant of naivety and honesty. The first sections of stories, including; ‘My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn’, ‘Mericans’, and ‘Tepeyac’ communicate the directness of children, even in their titles.  I really find it wonderful how Cisernos changes her diction and syntax based on the voice she is speaking from, it adds true authenticity to her writing. 

The first impressions of this book are definetly not what I think about now in relations to this novel. By reading my first blog entry on Cisneros and reminiscing back to what I thought this book was going to be like, I never imagined how blunt certain issues would be adressed. We didnt talk about it much in class, but I cannot believe how the woman in the story gets such sick pleasure from ruining people’s lives. I still can’t get over this fact, and I’m going to attribute it to my psych major. It’s hard to say if the omwna in the story is the same person throughout the entire novel, but if the girl who was raped is the same woman who was hidding little gummy bears in her lover’s house to be found by his wife, I would be able to comprehend her character a lot more. Women, and especially chicanas, sometimes feel a loss of control in their lives that can be due to many aspects of the immigrant experience. This includes the language barriers, dignity losses, the fact that all aspects of their lives are brand new, oppression…and the list goes on. It is so hard for these women to make their lives in America when they themselves look down on ther own races. It is so hard to have pride in something that is so often bashed by society and looked down upon.
I know this is somewhat digressing, but I was watching “Bend it like Beckham” this weekend, and the same issues of double standards arose that I’m finding in this book. Why can men be upset about the situations they fnd themselves in (such as not having enough money to support their famalies, not being able to change their situation), but women cannot? Why do women have to turn to men to find the happiness they deserve in life. I am so proud of the woman who hollers as she passes over the creek in that tale about the wife escaping her husband. chicanas need to see that it is alright for a woman to be independent, and that she can make it out there in the real world wihtout a man.
Many times in these stories, the woman has to feel ashamed for being sexual but the man doesnt (why should the woman have to move away when she is pregnant but he man can stay wherever he pleases and continue on with his life sans-baby?)
It is just sad to me that these issues have to be written about in a book for us to be aware of what they are. They should not be a problem, period.
And along that note, north american women are no better than those in this book. We too wait anxiously to find the right man that will suddenly make our lives complete. We too rely on sitcoms to dictate what our relationships should resemble. I am not going to stant here (or rather write here) about how different these women are from us, because they are not. They may be faced with some hardships that we take for granted, but overall: they are just women. Women who live life just like us and should get our empathy from the heart.

I found Bien Pretty to be my favorite chapter to read in the second half.  I liked how after her mysterious “god-like” man left her to be with his family, that she came to grips with herself.  I saw it as an acceptable ending for this book.  It came across to me as a denunciation of almost everything the book had been talking about in the previous stories.  For example after she realizes that the telenovelas are not the way how life really is played out she comes to grip with reality and starts living life instead of watching it go by.  “After a few days I’m watching the telenovelas. Avoiding board meetings, rushing home from work…I watched them all.  In the name of research.  I started dreaming of these Rosas and Briandas and Luceros.  And in my dreams I’m slapping the heroine to her senses…” (Cisneros, 161).  This seemed to me to be a reversal or a culmination of most of the books.  Only after she had felt some sort of passionate relationship with someone was she able to say to herself that these telenovelas were not based in reality.  That reality to her was for herself to make things happen and “get it done.”  But it was frustrating to read the entire book knowing that some of the ladies were lost in these soap operas.  Even though that this was all that they knew.  This story almost seemed to be a rebuttal of the actual woman hollering creek in Texas; in a sense that the woman in this story overcomes her seeming oppression and doesn’t drown herself instead of being forced to drown her child.  I think it is worth some merit to note that this woman is an American and seemingly to be in the “upper-crust” of her area.

Overall, very enjoyable read.  Even though I still enjoyed Who Would Have Thought It? just a little more.

i have enjoyed the variety in cisneros’ writing very much… and there is plenty of variety.  this collection bounces from the point of view of a child, a self-absorbed teen, a promiscuous woman, among many others; and that’s just who is telling the story.  then there is the way these narrators tell their stories.  we read one woman’s stream of conscious describing her lover and their life together; then we read an entire story through the dialogue of two other characters; we read people’s letters to saints begging for help; another in six short poetic paragraphs. in doing this, cisneros allows readers to connect with her characters on more levels.  not all readers are going to enjoy the same ‘setup’ and with her variety, there is more choices for more readers.  

I really enjoyed reading Woman Hollering Creek. I had become so engaged in the stories and i felt like one of the characters in the book specially  In the childhood stories and  even though I’m not chicana, I felt the pain that the women had felt in the different stories.   There were times that Cisnero’s language broke me laughing aloud in the bus or the library feeling awkward, and there were times that It hurt so much that I had to take a break and breath. I’m not too good when it comes to stories of violation, rape or betraying women. 

What amazed me the most was how Cisnero could put herself in the skin of all these characters. Their prespective, language and emotions seemed so real. The language she uses in the chapter Eleven is exactly how an eleven year old school girl would talk. 

There were times that her tone, or language sounded like north american “O My God!” type of girls, who use a lot of “like…like…. o my god!”….and I felt like I was stuck in the bus listening to one of these “o my god conversations, and i just wish I could fast forward it or put on my Ipod and not listen.  This is an amazing skill, to be able to write in so many different ways. 

The best example of language style would be chapter Little Miracles, Kept Promises. Cisneros uses a different language and humor in each letter. 

ie. 

Dear San Lazaro,

My mother’s comadre DEmetria said if I prayed to you that like maybe you could help me because you were raised from the dead and did a lot of miracles and maybe if I lit a candle every night for seven days and prayed, you might maybe could help me with my face breaking out with so many pimples. Thank you. 

Rubén Ledesma

Hebbronville, Texas (p121)

What I find very interesting is when she uses a semi dialogue in some parts where there is a woman having a conversation, explaining a story to someone, but the reader can not see the other character in this dialogue, or it’s not obvious who she’s talking to. So the reader has to guess. And most importantly is that the author does not give a voice to the other person in this dialogue. sO I guess it’s not a dialogue!

I think p126-127 are very important. Some quotes that stood out for me were:

” Do boys think, and girls daydream? Do only girls have to come out and greet the relatives and smile and be nice and quedar bien?”( p126)

just below that the family friends ask the girl about what she wants to study and when she’s going to get married…. and It’s so painful to read that paragraph

“she’s gona be a painter.

A painter! Tell her I got five rooms that need painting.

When you become a mother….” p 126

As if it’s been written on girls fourhead since they’re born, MUST MARRY, BECOME A MOTHER, HAVE CHILDREN. 

Being anything other than that is unacceptable in the societies that Cisneros describes.  

Then she follows:

“I wouldn’t mind being a father. at least a father could still be artist, could love something instead of someone, and no one would call that selfish.” p 127

Of course! if women want to pursue their own dreams, they’re selfish, and they represent failure of the family and the society. If a woman starts doing anything other than what she’s told to or expected of, she’s a Malinchista, Hocicona..  Malinche, or la chingada, is seen as the traitor, who let down all mexicans Of course it had to be a woman. It’s blamed on the women instead of seeing the whole picture. the narrator expresses a great pain being called Malinche. 

I could go on for so much longer, but i have to rap it up. i enjoyed very much reading Cisneros’ book, some parts were really poetic and it really touched me, ie. Chapeter There was a man .There was a woman. Even though this chapter is only two pages it’s really powerful and beautifully written. 

the two stories in the second half that really had an effect on me were “eyes of Zapata” and “bien pretty.” Eyes of Zapata really showed the sadness and vulnerability of this woman who is longing for something that she cannot have which is kind of what Bien Pretty is about as well. I just found Eyes of Zapata to be some poetically written and written in a manner that is so vivid one can almost image being in her place. The way this woman describes Zapata as he sleeps has so much detail in it, and you can feel the devotion and her love towards this silent and misterious person who never fully appreciates her. Her description of how they met to her description of where they are now and how he is with other women shows us her emotions over time and filled me ( the reader) with sadness and how this love withers over time , but not because of her losing her feelings towards him, but because of who he is, the situation of mexico during this time, and all the hardships she went through, eventually becoming numb to it all. This story is filled with so much heartache and suffering because of love, that it makes one wonder whether the mistified zapata was all he was led up to be?? it definatley made me question and at times hate him and his motives while at the same time attracted to his character more and more, which is what i think, the woman is going through.

Bien pretty also talks about a woman losing her man. also a man that comes off as mysterious. I liked how it showed the ignorance of this americanized mexicana towards other mexicans. For example when she asked Flavio if he knew any indigenous dances. I think that after he left, and after agonizing for so long, she finally decided to start living her life how it was meant to be lived. Not watching herself live her days but actually living them. She seemed to have been really affected by this mexicano who whisked her off her feet and then disappeared, someone who she thought had the image of a god, not like those americanos she used to date. I found it interesting how she noted that she could never have sex in english again, because the way spanish flowed and all carinitos used.

Anyways all in all, this was an extroardinary book. I loved the way it was written in short stories and the amount of detail and poetism that Cisneros uses. Id love to know where her inspiration came from for each of these little stories.

Are we supposed to talk about Cisneros’ writing style?
I think that her use of Spanglish is very interesting…
My favourite part about the way she writes is her subtle way of hinting that a something is meant to be in Spanish, although it is written in English. For example, she directly translates Spanish phrases into English: “I gave light” (93), “My sky, my life, my eyes” (113)…expressions that are not the same in English. But then she also uses some funny Chicano Spanish words, for example “Wachelos” (123). Chicano Spanish has always intrigued me, both English and Spanish at the same time, but also neither.

My favourite stories in this second half of the book were Eyes of Zapata and Bien Pretty. Bien Pretty was written in such a way that pointed out the differences between the narrator, as an educated Chicana (supposedly born in the U.S.) woman and Flavio, a Mexican man living in the U.S. The narrator points out her dual identity, to bring it back to Gloria, her state of nepantla…
she says: “I wanted to be Mexican at that moment, but it was true. I was not Mexican” (152). It was also interesting when she pointed out that she had never “made love in Spanish before…not with anyone whose first language was Spanish” (153). This shows that she has lived a very hybridized Mexican-American life, not truly belonging to one culture or the other, one language or the other.

Their cultural differences are pointed out over dinner, she is talking about “Afro-Brazilian dance as a means of spiritual healing” (150) whereas he is talking about going to the gym every Thursday “with aims to build himself a body better than Mil Mascara’s” (150). She is a University-educated Chicana from San Francisco…he is an exterminator from San Antonio…Cisneros is not subtle when she points out their cultural, social and class differences…while the narrator is interested in discussing culture, international cuisine and other more “intellectual” topics his choice of topics are far more superficial…what happens at work, his daily activities, his own superficial goal to have a better body than a lucha libre wrestler.

I totally loved this story.

I also totally loved Eyes of Zapata. Cisneros’ ability to create this love story/affair of Emiliano Zapata and Ines was fantastic. I don’t have much time to write about this one, but the one thing that I wanted to throw out there was this overall feeling that I got from Cisneros’ writing about the Mexican revolution (I time when patriotism and loyalty were important things to define) to me the relationship between Ines and Zapata almost symbolizes Cisneros’ relationship with Mexico and Mexican culture. A lifelong love affair, that is both strong and weak at the same time…but Ines says that despite how many other women Zapata is with he always comes back to her…to me this symbolized Cisneros’ returns to Mexico throughout her life, never forgetting her love, her life of Mexico, proving her loyalty to Mexico despite her dual identity as a Mexican-American and the life she creates in the United States. Okay that’s it for now…hasta manana.

Wow! Cisneros uses so many different writing techniques throughout her work…it’s been fun to study them! I chose to write about a few stories where the different stylistic techniques stood out to me.

Woman Hollering Creek

One thing that I found interesting that was brought up in my discussion group in class is the author’s use of short, choppy and often fragmented sentences. We have a great example of this on pg 53, “…just a loan, for the baby’s medical expenses. Well then if he’d rather she didn’t. All right, she won’t. Please don’t anymore. Please don’t….But please, at least for the doctor visit. She won’t ask for anything else. She has to. Why is she so anxious? Because.” By using these abrupt and unfinished sentences, Cisneros is able to poignantly illustrate the scattered feelings of anxiety, and apprehension, experienced by the female protagonist, Cleófilas.
Another aspect of style which was brought up in class is the author’s use of one sided conversations; those of which portray the standpoints of the female characters. It seems like Cisneros is providing a sharp contrast here with giving voice only to the women, in attempts to shed light on a past where the right to have a voice, forcibly belonged only to men. Cisneros gives this right to the women in her stories and does not allow, what I feel she implicitly communicates as, the ‘overpowering’ voice of a man to be heard.

Eyes of Zapata

I was a little bit confused with the timeline of this story because it is totally out of order. However I believe it starts in the present, then travels to the past, and comes back to the present. This transition between the present and past happens repeatedly, and adds even more colour to the already vibrant style of Cisneros’ work. These flashbacks help to illustrate the main character’s past dreams versus the reality of her present life, which like so many of the other characters’ lives in Cisneros’ stories, is filled with hardships. The last line of this story emphasizes the importance of these transitions through time, “Let me look at you. Before you open those eyes of yours. The days to come, the days gone by. Before we go back to what we’ll always be.” This quote sums up the dreaded reality of the protagonist’s life, which for the reader, is enhanced by the author’s mixture of flashbacks and present time.

There Was a Man, There Was a Woman

In this short narration, Cisneros uses a lot of repetition. She basically tells the exact same story twice, one being the story of a man, and the other being that of a woman. It seems like this is one of the only times the author portrays both male and female as equal, giving both a voice. Both sexes are struggling through life, looking for answers at the bottom of a bottle. I think that this use of repetition provides a way to show that men and women are equal and both struggle with the same issues. The fact that the man and woman in this story never meet due to having opposite pay days, seems to be a reflection of how the women and men in Cisneros’ work never seem to connect and therefore can never understand each other. Both struggle with similar issues but are so consumed with their own problems that they miss the opportunity to work together and unite through their common hardships.

There are so many more aspects to Cisneros’ writing style that I would like to comment on…so little time…:)

“Woman Hollering Creek” seemed to chronicle and follow a heartbeat. One representing love. This book’s love, its stories, its heartbeats, were at times slow, steady, and poignant. Other times, it captured the Chicana experience and palpitated and fluttered like a ladybug in a glass jar. The love in this book, and moreover the stories in this book were, much like love, sometimes short, and sometimes eternal. At times, a bit predictable and practical, other times a fantastic freefall into an unknown oblivion. Strong, yet vulnerable.

After reading the first half of the book, consisting of shorter stories, I found the last two stories “Bien Pretty” and “The Eyes of Zapata” initially unwelcome. I was thoroughly enjoying the short format of the stories of the book when while languishing and leisurely letting myself absorb their content, but alas, I still pondered “when is this story going to end?” Maybe it is just my short attention span, or that in “The Eyes of Zapata”, I was taken aback by the analogy of the bird flying and found it (a bit) less realistic than the other stories in the book. However, with time, I started to falter and again become weak to Cisnero’s literary charms. I found myself becoming engaged in the stories, so much so that at times I felt as more of an actor in the books than a reader. And thought it may seem an obvious statement to make, I enjoyed the somewhat chronological order (in the age of the narrator) of the stories….from the tender and young love of a friend “Lucy”, to a different sort of love between Lupe and Flavio in “Bien Pretty”.

I also appreciate that some of the stories had a specific time and place, from the modern San Francisco to the late 19th century. I also really appreciated that Cisneros touched on Chicana culture in “Bien Pretty”, and took someone raised in the US and used her as a character in her story.

This book was a pleasure to read. Like popcorn at the movie theatre, I just wanted more and more (except I am sure “Woman Hollering Creek” is probably less in calories!).

I found “Eyes of Zapata” to stand out as the best and most resonant story in the book. It was also the longest. It shows how Cisneros can write outside of her modern Chicana persona, and take on the voice of a completely different woman in a completely different time and place. The protagonist of this story is purely Mexican, a woman of the Revolution. Even Emiliano Zapata, hero of the Revolution, hero of Mexico, does not escape Cisneros’ criticism. This story sees a much less political side of the Revolution…I don’t want to say the female side because Cisneros would be enraged if I implied that females don’t understand politics; this isn’t what I mean….I mean that it is a more domestic and human view of the Revolution, which takes love and family and everyday life into account. Even in this story, the man continues to be the intangible, the unreachable, the elusive beauty and strength in the woman’s life. Her descriptions of his body, his hands and feet, border upon idolatry. She worships him and his beauty, and she needs him. In her love, she is blinded and trusts him, which is always a mistake according to Cisneros. When he betrays her, she is hurt, but when he comes back to her again and again, she realizes that in the end, she also holds power over him. Perhaps the woman’s love for Emiliano is intensified because of his intangibility, whereas he is able to detach himself from her because he has possessed her from the beginning, since he kissed her under the tree. Again Cisneros emphasizes the difference of a woman’s love and a man’s love…women are possessed by men, and men are solely possessors and never possessed.
However, the recurrent theme of mystical or primal female power is also prominent in Ines, the protagonist. Her ability to see things in dreams, her ability to leave her body and fly over the countryside, all-seeing, a spirit, these attest to her depth of wisdom and power. To Cisneros, women are magical, and their power is often one misunderstood by men.
This misunderstanding results in suffering for women; Ines’ mother was a bold and mystical woman and was killed for it.
In the end, despite the fact that he leaves her time and again, Emiliano returns to Ines time and again, and she accepts her fate. Despite her magical strength and wisdom, she is still resigned to suffer at the hands of the man she worships and loves.
And Emiliano is oblivious to it all. Throughout the whole story he is asleep, at peace, while she has turmoil inside of her. While she watches him from the skies in another woman’s bed, he is oblivious. This seems familiar to Cisneros; her other stories reflect similar male attitudes.
This story and all the stories we have read in class are really interesting to me because my mother is Mexican…she came to Canada when she was 20. And many of the female attitudes in the books we’ve read are something I have grown up with my whole life: the adaptation of Catholicism into a slightly mystical, folkloric religion mixed with elements of Aztec and Maya beliefs; the belief in supernatural or spiritual power in women; the feeling of oppression by men and the culture of machismo (how many times has my mother told me, just like in the novel, “never marry a mexican!”; the idolatry of men on the other hand; and a very colourful, generous way of loving. To me, Cisneros’ book rings very true.