Hardo Baker
HCOM 197
Independent
Studies
Journal
(Woman Hollering
Creek and other stories)
(By Sandra
Cisneros)
Chapter One
Section One
My Friend Lucy
Upon opening the book and reading the first
paragraph I noticed a strangeness in the writing. I said to myself that these are run-on
sentences.
I had to go back and read the
first paragraph all over because it did not make sense to me at first. As I read on, I thought to myself that either
this individual is illiterate or she wrote in this style on purpose. Consequent to finishing the first section in
chapter one I realized that she did the run on sentences on purpose. One of the reasons was that she wanted to sound
like a small child and perhaps the other was to link one thought to the next as
perhaps a hyper child might. It was also
interesting how in the first paragraph she started out with "Lucy
Anguiano, Texas girl who smells like corn" and ends the paragraph
"like the yellow blood of butterflies." Notice that corn is yellow and how she links
the blood of butterflies that is also yellow to Lucy. Sandra describes things in great detail in
this first section. Notice how she
describes things once again, "giant cat-eye with a grasshopper green
spiral center" that is a marble.
Again in this passage with, "only a pink tongue rolling around in
there like a blind worm" that is the inside of Lucy's mouth that she
relates to animals or bugs (1). She
mentions animals in one form or another throughout this section.
I get the sense that the young girl who is
telling the story is an only child who longs to have sisters like her friend
Lucy. Wishing she was dark skinned like
her friend's family longing to be one of them.
The young girl also has a strange personality. She wants to scratch off her Lucy's mosquito
bites, look under the house where rats hide, peel a scab from her knee and eat
it and sneeze on a cat. Yet, she also has a very charming side to her
also. The unnamed girl wants to share a
popsicle, saved three M & M's for Lucy, wants to comb and braid her hair,
and wave to an unknown woman on the bus.
Section Two
Eleven
Sandra continues to use run on sentences. Yet, they are not quite as long as in the
first section of chapter one. Yet, she
keeps the character talking in the same manner as before. Though, I notice that it is just the same
when Rachel starts crying. One can see
that the child's speech is peculiar. I
would have expected her to talk with the run on sentences when she is crying
and trying to explain something to someone, all the while sniffling and
hyper-ventilating. Sandra makes the
reader feel that Rachel is an insecure child.
Strangely, Sandra does not indent the first paragraph yet she indents
the rest. I have no reasoning why she
might have done this. I saw the same
thing in the first section when the story first began however I did not expect
it to continue.
I see that Rachel's birthday is here and she
finally is getting wiser. The older one
gets one never feels older just because your birthday has just arrived. The feeling of being a little older is a
gradual process as Rachel stated.
"You don't feel eleven. Not
right away. It takes a few days, weeks
even, sometimes even months. . ." (7).
I can relate to Rachel when she says, "Like some days you might say
something stupid, and that's the part of you that's still ten"(6). When visiting my parents, they tell me to
grow up or act my age when horsing around, joking trying to have fun. Though, to me this is the child within, which
everyone still has in them. Some people
have become so serious in life that they have forgotten that life is supposed
to be enjoyable. I really can feel what
Rachel is feeling when Mrs. Price puts Rachel on the spot with that dirty
stretched out raggedy sweater. When I was
a child, at the age of eleven, my family experienced hard times for a
year. I only had two pairs of
pants. In school, a classmate of mine
commented on my pants in front of my friends.
The embarrassment was overwhelming.
Nevertheless, a teacher embarrassed Rachel and when she found out that
the sweater did not belong to Rachel she should have apologized instead of
acting as it was no big deal. It was
interesting that Mrs. Price forced the child to put on the old musty
sweater. It was also very cold of the
teacher not have given in when Rachel started bawling. This should have signaled the teacher that
perhaps the child was right when she said the sweater did not belong to
her. Why the child wished she was one
hundred and two does not make sense to me.
Rather, I would have expected something a little more realistic such as
her saying fifty.
Section Three
Salvador Late or
Early
Again I
noticed that Sandra uses either animals or items related to animals (like
caterpillar and feathers) to give us a better picture in her descriptions of
items in this section. She compares
Salvador's eyes with the color of a caterpillar. She describes his wispy thin arms to being
stuffed with feathers. Yet, I also
notice that she uses other objects to describe things suddenly. Here are a few examples:
". . . hundred little fingers of red,
green, yellow, blue and nub
of black sticks" to describe crayons
"the forty pound body of boy with
its geography of scars" to
describe his appearance
"the hundred balloons of happiness
the single guitar of grief" showing
us his feelings
"flutters
in the air before disappearing like a memory of
kites" explaining the way it looks as Salvador and his brothers are running across
the school yard (10-11).
I get the feeling that Sandra had remember a
young boy in her class that she felt sorry for yet, she did not like. First of all, I say this because she is
writing a small section here in chapter one.
Secondly, by the way she describes him.
Thirdly, is due to the fact she explains his living conditions and his
family. Perhaps her dislike for Salvador
was because he was nobody's friend and even his teacher could not remember his
name.
Section Four
Mexican Movies
Interestingly, I did not notice Ms. Cisneros
use colors or animals to describe things in this section. She tells us how the speaker (which is a
young girl) likes the Mexican movies.
This is especially true when the sex scenes start because that is when
they get quarters to spend on what they want in the lobby. I don't however think it is as much of the
movies themselves as it is the playing in the theater; the money they get to
spend; and the loving feeling when her parents carry them upstairs and put them
to bed. I believe that it is more of
what is going on in the theater also.
She says how she likes the actor Pedro Infante the best. However, that is probably because of the
women throwing the flowers from the balcony and because he ends his movies with
a happy song. She doesn't tell us any
real reason why she likes the Mexican movies over American movies
themselves. She is being entertained by
the audience when they are having a good time laughing and carrying on when a
child is on stage and his image is reflecting in with the images on the screen.
Section Five
Barbie-Q
Once again Sandra does not use colors or
animals to describe things. However, she
does describe their Barbies' in detail.
Their physical appearance and their clothing are old, worn out, smoke
damaged from a fire, and half melted.
Yet, to these children they are the best things in the world. The joy of having the Barbies' is
tremendous. To the children it does not
matter whether the dolls were brand new or not.
When children are without and know that they will never be able to have
certain things because of the lack of money, they will be content on the simple
things they have and receive. Nobody
knows that these dolls were fire rejects and the girls couldn't care less. Having the toys that children who are better
off have captivates the girls. Before going to flea market they had to play
with the two Barbie dolls they had. They
had an old sock for a dress and had to have a make believe Ken, which usually
caused them to argue in the end. Once
they saw all the Barbies' and accessories for sale at the flea market, the
girls pleadingly asked their parents to buy some of the toys for them. They now had the makings of a less arguable
time when they will be playing with the
Barbies'.
Section Six
Mericans
As I read this section, I noticed that the
person who is telling the story is not the same in all of these sections. One would not have realized this until one
gets to where the grandmother in the church says, "Micaela, you may wait
outside with Alfredito and Enrique"(19).
Sandra never gave the characters' names until I reached the second
section where she gave us the name Rachel.
I used the name Rachel, up until now, causing me to go back and edit
where I thought Rachel was speaking.
Realizing my mistake went back and I plugged in the term young girl or
unnamed girl instead of using Rachel's name.
This really surprised me and yet it confused me. I had thought that these sections were just
different experiences and moments in the same little girls' life. Micaela does not like her grandmother. She feels she is too strict, a stern person
of character. She tells us about the
experience of going to church. None of
her parents, aunts or uncles go with them.
So grandmother must pray for them all.
I get the feeling that the young girl does not like to go to church
either. I remember when I was a child I
did not like having to go. I would
rather have been outside playing with my friends that did not have to go to
church. I can tell that Micaela is the
only girl in the family and her brothers tease her and don't really enjoy
playing with girls. Yet, she does not
let her feelings of sorrow and pains show when she is being teased and when the
boys make insults about girls. The funny
thing is that the children are outside and not inside of church. Micaela's brother Keeks is talking to a lady
and man outside of the entrance to the church apparently in Spanish. The couple are from out of town because their
appearance told one so. The town
probably consists of mostly people who are Mexicans sue to the fact that the
lady is wearing pants and the man is wearing shorts. In most other places in the U.S. this would
be normal attire. The lady offers Keeks
some gum. Yet, when he accepts the gum
she becomes surprised when he turns around and speaks English to his brother
and sister. She thought that just
because he was Mexican that he could not speak English. This just goes to show the ignorance,
stupidity and stereotyping people do just because they see people who are from
another culture. They were born here and
they are proud to be "Mericans."
I see this same type of behavior is the east side of Salinas. Gringos will come up and ask a Hispanic if
they speak English assuming right off the bat that they only speak Spanish.
Section Seven
Tepeyac
From my interpretation, Tepeyac is a town
somewhere deep in Mexico. Looking up the
word Tepeyac, I find that there is no such word in the Spanish dictionary. The story starts out with "When the sky
of Tepeyac opens its first thin stars. . ." is a sure indication of the
fact (21). This time Sandra writes not
only in the past tense from a child's view, but also from an adult's view. Both views are of a town the narrator grew up
in and then returned to at a later time. Once again Sandra uses color in her
descriptions in the story. She explains
how the darkness of night is the color of Japanese blue. This is an odd thing to say. I did not know that there was such a color as
Japanese blue. I never heard of this
particular shade of blue. Perhaps it was
something she threw in for curiosities' sake.
The way she describes the town reminds me of the town where my spouse is
from in Mexico. She talks about a person
going to the borrowed country, which he will not remember. I assume Sandra meant the U.S. The narrator is looking back upon the times
when life was much simpler and people cared for each other and their homes and
community. Upon returning to Tepeyac,
the narrator notices how small the house she lived in was. It was large to her as a child. Looking at it now in comparison to where she
has been living in the U.S. it is very tiny.
It saddens her to see how run down things have become in the town she
grew up in. I sense a feeling of disgust
of not only strangers living in the house she once had lived in, but also in
the changes of the shop that has turned into a pharmacy. Even the dilapidated looks of the basilica
with its closed doors and the cars fuming from the pollution they are producing
are giving her a sickening feeling. Time
and technology have set upon this once quaint town that have produced these
feelings. The way things were in the
past can not be the same today.. It is
the same for me. When I return to Marina
(the town I grew up in) I look around at all the changes since childhood times
that I don't seem to like either. I
remember when there were open pastures, horses roaming around on them, children
hunting and exploring trails that once were simple times, and will no longer
be. I think this is the same for
everyone. Their childhood times were
good memories and people wish that when they returned to these places they
could actually go back in time to the way things used to be. I get the impression that it is supposed to
be the older folks who lived and who used to live in this town are supposed to
remember how things were. Yet, it is
usually a child who remembers these things, for they were important and
everlasting moments that were photographed to their young minds.
Chapter Two
Section One
One Holy Night
The main character in this story, a female, was
actually taken advantage of by an elderly man.
Her name once again is never given to us as are the other characters in
this story. The thing I noticed the most
about this story however, was that Sandra did not use run on sentences as
much. This particular story was
excellent. To me I pictured my spouse
who was married once before. She was
only sixteen when she was married to a man ten years her elder. This kind of thing bothers me because I see
it as a wolf preying upon a young inocent girl.
There are a lot of men in the Mexican culture that seem to go after
young girls. I see it all the time in
Salinas, around the middle schools, guys pull up in their cars around a corner
and the young girls hurriedly hop in.
Then they zoom off. Strange that
such a young girl in the eighth grade would actually fall for a man that is
thirty seven years old.
I thought it was especially interesting that
the young girl's belly is being rubbed with jade by a witch woman. The old superstitions that people actually
still believe in, in such a modern time as ours. What I did not really understand is that it
she is in Mexico, having this old witch woman take care of her yet, she is with
her grandmother when she is in labor. It
had a real strange twist once I found out that Chaq was actually a murderer of
eleven females in the last seven years.
I also wonder, since Chaq came from a real poor family and it was found
out that he wasn't really Mayan what language he was speaking in or if he
really was using a real language, when he was speaking to the young girl. I wonder why her family blamed her condition
of becoming pregnant of the fact that it was because they were in the U.S. Girls in Mexico seem to leave the nest at a
early age. However, it is also true that
down there girls are not as likely to fool around out of wedlock due to
humiliation and respect for family values.
When Chaq showed the young girl all the guns and told her he wanted her
to know what he really did, I got the impression that he was probably a gun
runner or a robber. In the end of this
section, she said that she was going to have five children, two girls, two
boys, and one baby whom will be named Alegre.
Since Chaq was called Baby Boy I get the instinct impression that she
says that she will have one baby is the son/daughter of Chaq (baby Boy). When I looked up the word Alegre it meant
"happy" but it also meant "reckless, thoughtless" and
"fast, immoral"; and I assume that the later two is what the name
means in this case since this was how the father was.
My Tocaya
Once again Sandra Cisneros does not write in
the style she was using earlier. The
sentences are constructed of proper grammar that one would be used to reading. It was peculiar that Sandra used the title My
Tocaya. Patricia could not stand
Trish. The only reason she had anything
to even do with her was because a cute guy that Trish knew liked her. Tocaya means friend in Spanish. I would not call her me friend. Sandra gets the reader caught up into the
story and then she has an abrupt ending.
She leaves one hanging. I wanted
to know where Trish was when suddenly she appeared at the police station. I also wanted to know whom everyone had
mis-identified Trish for. If even her
parents thought the dead girl was Trish then who was this girl who resembled
her so much? I thought it bizarre that Patricia would say in the end that Trish
could not even die right. Patricia also
stated that she never even got to meet Max Lucas Luna Luna. I wonder why if Trish never did die and she
came back. What was the reason of never
encountering this young man who adorned Trish so much? I would also like to
have known what the reason was that Trish had run away. In the story they talk about how the girls
were segregated from the boys in two different catholic schools. I was in the same situation as I was growing
up. I can relate to this story very well. I went to Palma High School in Salinas, an
all boys' school. The girls went to
Notre Dame, an all girls school. We
exchanged some of the girls for the boys for certain situations or special
classes. The girls' school was about a
block away. They did not want us
together for fear that the boys would try seducing the girls.
Chapter Three
There Was a Man,
There Was a Woman
Section One
Woman Hollering
Creek
This story is the title of the book. It was a real sad story about a Mexican woman
that married a man from Texas. He
brought her back to the town of
Seguin. She did not really pay
attention to her father when she was getting married and he told her that he
would never abandon her. In other words,
he would always be there if she needed him.
However, the blinding of love causes many people to not here what
someone who loves or cares for us says to us.
No one actually knew how the creek got its
name. Though rumor has it, that the
creek was the weeping woman because La Llorona had drowned her children
there. Cleofilas (the Mexican woman in
this story) thought that Woman Hollering Creek was a funny name for a creek the
first time she heard it as she first crossed the creek. She just laughed. No one knew if the creek, which was
considered a woman, hollered from pain or anger.
Shortly after Cleofilas was married and arrived
at her new home she was beaten by her spouse.
She had always thought that if she was ever in such a predicament that
she would fight back and or run away.
Consequently, this was not her recourse.
She only consoled her husband while he cried in remorse. This would continue on and her husband would
not come home many a night only to be out drinking and perhaps carousing. [How familiar this setting is for many women here
in the U.S. and in many other parts of the world]. Cleofilas felt she could not go back to her
father's house because the town she came from would look down upon her for
coming home with a child and one in the oven.
Shame would be brought on her and her family for being without her husband. She would sit beside the creek many a day for
this was her place of serenity. Finally,
near her expectancy date she pleaded with her husband, to take her to the
doctor for the sake of the unborn child.
She was afraid that perhaps the child might be turned around inside of
her. This was a tough job in persuading
him since she was black and blue from one of his most recent beatings he
bestowed upon her. She told him she
would tell the doctor that she had fallen down the stairs.
Once Cleofilas was in the doctor's office, the
assistant who was going to perform the ultrasound perceived the marks all over
Cleofilas, who would only weep every time she neared her. Ultimately, the technician called a friend of
hers, because Cleofilas agreed, and asked her to pick up Cleofilas in two days
while her husband was at work. She was
to take her to the bus station in San Antonio so Cleofilas could escape the
abuse she has been receiving. As the
lady, Felice, picked her up and they drove across the creek, the woman let out
a very loud hollering sound. This scared
Cleofilas and her son who were riding along, feeling very scared that her
husband might show up any moment. Felice
apologized and told her she does that every time she crosses the creek, because
of the name. Suddenly, Cleofilas heard
Felice laughing again. However, it was
not Felice, realizing that it was a gurgling sound coming from her own
throat.
I think that the noise that was coming out of
Cleofilas let out of her throat was maybe a little bit of pain and anger from
the abuse she was suffering. Yet, I
think it was more a relief. I think the
creek symbolized the anger, pain, and most of all the relief from tyrants like
the abusive men that beat their women and get away with such a sick dastardly
deed. I would also like to point out the
the name Felice implies happiness.
Felice always gives a happy howl when ever she crosses the creek. The noise that Came out of Cleofilas would be
related to the happy Felice who just made Cleofilas happy by releasing her from
her pain and anger.
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