this book is sort of written in a familiar way to that of “y no se lo trago la tierra” in the way that it is also fragmented and is broken up into little sections that talk about random (or are they) events and have various titles. the book is a great read and made me want to read more and more. Im curious as to the fact of who these narrators are and where are they located. i guess sometimes they’re in mexico and sometimes in the states???

Also something i found interesting is that all the narrators that ive read so far have been children which is another similarity to “y no se lo trago la tierra.” I like that this book is in Spanglish (well more english than spanish,,,but you know what i mean).

The point of view of children (of different ages as well) is a really interesting way to get a good perspective on the different situations they were in. From being in a church to being indifferent of someone’s death, i thought that each child narrator brought their own persona forward.

The little stories are very random as well. I started out laughing at many of them to being a little shocked at the others. her style of writing is very easy too. Apart from having lots of short sentences or run on sentences, i liked the amount of detail she used to describe scenes (like the one with the Barbies).

Some of the scenes you could almost relate to. By putting yourself back in the age of that child or even now. The scene with the church and people walking on their knees, brought me back to the times that i was in mexico and had witnessed the same thing.

Cisneros obviously puts out many chicano issues up front for the reader. For example when the foreigners wanted to take the pictures of the children outside the church and then realized they were “mericans.” I felt that this passage apart from showing cultural diversity, definatley showed cultural ignorance (at least on the gringo side). Also in the other passages when it starts talking about sex, it made me tie this theme back with religion, how mexican catholic females were brought up and the different stereotypes and consequences that came along with rebelling against this traditionalism. Another theme was poverty, when the narrator talked about the boy in her school who had to dress his brothers, and help his mother, and lived poorly, and dressed bad. I think poverty is a large issue in mexican/chicano life, whether it being in the united states or mexico.

Overall, from what ive read, im really enjoying it and hopefully going to be enjoying it even more.

The book has a rather unusual structure. The stories seem to be chronologically compiled from childhood to adolescence and adulthood; however, each story has no explicit beginning or end. The stories open by identifying the main characters by their names and the protagonist seems to shift with every story. If the stories are told by the same narrator, she introduces herself indirectly through her tocaya. She seems to demarcate the borders by offering a birds-eye-perspective on her identity, negotiating her location between borders.
Cisneros seems to represent her position between Anglo and Mexican culture, “el otro lado- on the other side” by juxtaposing the Spanish words with the English words. Although she uses Spanish words once in awhile, I think this is the first time she placed them side by side.

I think it is interesting to see a book structurally similar to … y no se lo trago la tierra and find a poignant difference- the importance of naming stressed and how names function book. It reminds me of Who Would Have Thought It and how nearly all characters have names. Julie, the only surviving canary, symbolically trades places with Lavinia who ends up caged by the corruption of the ideological American dream.

I think Woman Hollering Creek and other stories ties all our reading together with its similarities with the other books.

Today I sat down with Woman Hollering Creek and I didn’t get up until I was halfway through, and even then I was reluctant to stop reading. Cisneros has such a powerful and fluid writing style that I quickly read through these stories while being completely engrossed in each of them. The first section, which is composed of girlhood vignettes, made me smile because the language is so evocative that it called up many of my own memories. Cisneros doesn’t neglect any of the senses, from the larger-than-life colours and objects seen from the eyes of a child, to the smell of Lucy and theatre popcorn, to the awful itch of the red sweater and being physically overtaken by emotion about an inconsequential and irrational thing. There were certain experiences and emotions I could relate to in the adolescent and adult sections of the book, but more commonly I felt dismay and frustration to be experiencing second-hand these terrible realities that are thankfully not my own, but are to many Chicanas.

Living in a deeply misogynist society is one of these realities. Not only do we read about the spousal abuse suffered by Cleofilas, but in both “My Tocaya” and “Woman Hollering Creek” the female characters mention how the newspapers are filled with accounts of women beaten and killed by their husbands, lovers, and male family members. When this happens it is not a surprise, but with a sickening resignation it is accepted as business as usual. Another reality that Chicanas must deal with is how their femininity and sexuality is constructed by the cheesy romanticism of telenovelas and ballads on the one hand and the Mexican and Southwestern myths of la Virgen de Guadalupe, la Llorona, and la Chingada on the other. The ways, often profoundly damaging ones, that these manifest themselves in women’s lives can be seen multiple times in the first half of the book, most painfully when a Chicana actually jokingly reenacts the Malinche/Cortez relationship with a white man she’s having an affair with.

The last reality that I’ll mention is that of being caught between two countries, not really being from one or the other, and feeling like you’re failing in both. There are strange and sad moments of dissonance when, for example, a bumbling tourist takes a picture of “authentic” Mexican children only to find out that they’re actually “Mericans,” and how the family in “One Holy Night” sends its female members back and forth between Mexico and the U.S. when they accidentally get pregnant, a migration forced by family honor in which the women have no say.

I. My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn

This is by far my favorite book we have read so far. I find Cisnero’s writing style to be captivating and poetic. The way in which she describes situations and emotions artfully and metaphorically is very powerful and speaks to the heart. I am having a hard time putting this one down! I really enjoy how she not only gives voice to the many characters and perspectives represented in the book, but she actually seems to become these characters themselves. There is a tragic quality to her writing, but it this same quality that resonates very deeply in the Chicano and female experience as I understand it. Her writing style inspires me to want to write more!

In My Friend Lucy Who Smells Like Corn, Cisneros embodies the voice of a sassy eleven-year-old girl, and these stories hilariously and insightfully detain the trials and triumphs of what it is like to see the world from her perspective. At first, I was slightly thrown off by the colloquial style, and it briefly felt like she was trying too hard, but once I got into the swing of things, I really came to enjoy seeing the world from these eyes. Even in the absurdity of the stories she tells, there is a certain truth and familiarity that is evoked in regards to me as my eleven-year-old self. I loved the way in which she described Salvador in Salvador Late or Early. “Salvador with eyes the color of caterpillar, Salvador of the crooked hair and crooked teeth. Salvador whose name the teacher cannot remember, is a boy who is no one’s friend, runs along somewhere in that vague direction where homes are the color of bad weather…”.

There are also beautiful description in the following story One Holey Night. I really enjoy the subtlety of how she writes. She does not flat out say things that happen or the way people feel about said situations, but she probes at them in the form of metaphors. “Then abuelita made me tell her the real story of how the cart had disappeared, all of which I told this time, except for that one night, which I would have to tell anyway, weeks later, I prayed for the moon of my cycle to come back, but it would not.”

All in all, I am very impressed with this book. So far, this class has probably had the best selection of literature of any lit class I’ve taken at UBC, and all of the books add different layers and dimensions to my overall understanding of the Chicano experience. I enjoy the artistry and the subtle layering of perspectives that seem to exists very strong in many of these

So far, I’ve been finding this book extremely unique in terms of its writing, style and breakdown. I can’t think of anything quite like this which I’ve read before. I enjoy the short chapter formats and the fast pace of the book in the beginning. Many of the sentences, while short and fragmented, are very descriptive and capture the moments described quite well. Cisneros creates a really personal style of writing, it’s as if she just threw out her thoughts as they came and put them down on paper. Even from the first chapter, I felt a pretty strong connection and understanding of the book. What I find amazing, is that as Marti was extremely descriptive (which I do enjoy), I think it works so much better in this book. I’m still trying to figure out how they’re descriptive style is different, maybe marti’s is more quantitative while Cisneros is more qualitative? I’m not sure.

As with much of the other works we’ve read, find that this book does a good job at shining light on the chicano community. Maybe it’s from patterns i’ve picked up throughout the works we’ve read so far, but I find I’ve been exposed to many gender issues I didn’t think were apparent. I also enjoy the innocence of this book through the child’s perspective, which complements the fragmented sentences really well.

So far I am really enjoying this book! The short stories in Cisnero’s novel are very simplistic in first-person narratives and provide very detailed descriptions. For example, in “My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn”, a young girl carefully describes everything she knows about Lucy and how she longs to be her good friend. “We’re going to run home backwards and we’re going to run home frontwards….We’re going to wave to a lady we don’t know on the bus. Hello!” Cisneros definitely embodies the thoughts of an eleven-year old girl effectively and the simplicity of the language and actions made this chapter in particular very heartwarming!

The first section of the book consist of stories concerning young girls. My favourite chapter has to have been “eleven” because it was intriguining how someone could feel that they are two, three, five, ten, but not eleven!!! I felt sorry for her as she was being embarrassed on the brink of tears on her eleventh birthday, and that she would rather be one hundred and two years old just for her eleventh birthday to be over.

The message I am getting so far from the stories is that these Mexican-Americans are experiencing clashes between their heritage Mexican culture with the demands of American culture. I found this to be particularly true in the chapter “Mericans” where Micaela goes to a Mexican church with her grandmother and cannot relate to the Spanish customs but at the same time she feels out of place in the American society as well.

I have also read The House on Mango Street and I found the language to be very similiar because the story was also told through the eyes of a child.

I’m starting to see some similarities will every book we’ve read so far and it is definitely helping me get some sort of grasp as to what kind of hardships the Chicano communities go through.  I would enjoy this book a little more if it weren’t pessimistic towards men and did not shape us as harsh and typically a villainous sex. But, the same critique goes for women as well.  At least I got this from the first half of the book.  This was encompassed perfectly in one quotation.

“All I know is I was sleeping with your father the night you were born.  In the same bed where you were conceived.  I was sleeping with your father and didn’t give a damn about that woman, your mother.  If she was a brown woman like me, I might’ve had a harder time living with myself, but since she’s not, I don’t care” (Cisneros,76).

I thought this was a very powerful quote, the kind of quote where when you’re reading and just think to yourself “o snap!” The whole chapter never marry a Mexican was a lead up to certain stereotypes.  Since this man was married to a white woman, and according to the speakers logic, that she was not in some way equal to Chicanos.  This quote frames the man as not having any sort of control while it depicts the woman as a deviant she-wolf, who has no remorse for her actions.  I don’t enjoy how this book cages men under the guise of weak-willed individuals.  Having said that it makes the book a page turner.

Another quote from the same chapter that I thought was very interesting is on 71.  “I’m amphibious.  I’m a person who doesn’t belong in any social class.  The rich like to have me around because they envy my creativity; they know they can’t buy that.  The poor didn’t mind if I live in their neighborhood because they know I’m poor like they are, even if my education and the way I dress keeps us world apart…not to the middle class from which my sister Ximena and I fled” (Cisneros, 71).

This quote stuck to me when I was reading.  I really connected with this character and his social entrapment.  This was an interesting take on immigrants who live in el otro lado.  So far our readings have dealt with social assent and poverty, but this man doesn’t have a class to stick to and to me doesn’t seem to fazed by it.  I am looking forward to finishing this book and putting the jig-saw pieces together.

I’m starting to see some similarities will every book we’ve read so far and it is definitely helping me get some sort of grasp as to what kind of hardships the Chicano communities go through.  I would enjoy this book a little more if it weren’t pessimistic towards men and did not shape us as harsh and typically a villainous sex. But, the same critique goes for women as well.  At least I got this from the first half of the book.  This was encompassed perfectly in one quotation.

“All I know is I was sleeping with your father the night you were born.  In the same bed where you were conceived.  I was sleeping with your father and didn’t give a damn about that woman, your mother.  If she was a brown woman like me, I might’ve had a harder time living with myself, but since she’s not, I don’t care” (Cisneros,76).

I thought this was a very powerful quote, the kind of quote where when you’re reading and just think to yourself “o snap!” The whole chapter never marry a Mexican was a lead up to certain stereotypes.  Since this man was married to a white woman, and according to the speakers logic, that she was not in some way equal to Chicanos.  This quote frames the man as not having any sort of control while it depicts the woman as a deviant she-wolf, who has no remorse for her actions.  I don’t enjoy how this book cages men under the guise of weak-willed individuals.  Having said that it makes the book a page turner.

Another quote from the same chapter that I thought was very interesting is on 71.  “I’m amphibious.  I’m a person who doesn’t belong in any social class.  The rich like to have me around because they envy my creativity; they know they can’t buy that.  The poor didn’t mind if I live in their neighborhood because they know I’m poor like they are, even if my education and the way I dress keeps us world apart…not to the middle class from which my sister Ximena and I fled” (Cisneros, 71).

This quote stuck to me when I was reading.  I really connected with this character and his social entrapment.  This was an interesting take on immigrants who live in el otro lado.  So far our readings have dealt with social assent and poverty, but this man doesn’t have a class to stick to and to me doesn’t seem to fazed by it.  I am looking forward to finishing this book and putting the jig-saw pieces together.

Sandra Cisnero’s collection Woman Hollering Creek: and other stories is, first of all, quite wonderful. I can understand why it is a commonly studied text in universities, and why it was chosen for our class. Other than How the García Girl Lost Their Accents (my wiki article), this is my favorite text thus far. Of course, the English enhances my experience somewhat.