Essay on "Woman Hollering Creek" - Dreams vs. Reality

Woman Hollering creek is a book of stories published in 1991 Sandra Cisneros. These stories talk about the experience she had being around American influences while still being around her Mexican heritage. Cisneros grew up north of the Mexico-US border. These stories focus on the social roles of women and their relationships. In her stories her characters are stereotypes. For example that men are macho and woman are weak. Cisneros talks about three clichés: the virgin, seductress and mother. The protagonists in the story are searching for their identity only to find out that their dreams will be shattered. Cisneros likes to talk about the lives of immigrants. Some of her stories can be very long but most of them are short. In most of her writing she likes to use storytelling; for example each story uses a new character. She has earned herself the title of an accomplished poet.

She doesn't know being beaten by her husband is not a normal thing. She is living in the suburbs with her husband with neighbors who in their own way, are trapped as well. Cisneros also shows how life can be for Cleofilas when a mom is not present to guide heir, again, Cleofilas's only guide are the television series. "The creek, the televonelas and the border define the mythic spaces given to Cleofilas in her fantasies of escape from a battering husband."(Mullen 6) The town which Cisneros chose to have as the setting of the story, there isn't much for her to do;" in the town where she grew up, there isn't much to do except accompany the aunts and godmothers to the house of one or the other to play cards."(Cisneros 44) Using that, Cisneros helps the reader to get a taste of how the environment is. An environment which women don't have a say in, an environment where woman don't have the equal power as men; the environment Cleofilas was raised in.

The essay by Judith Ortiz Cofer, “The Myth of the Women/ Just Met a Girl Named Maria” is a powerful piece. She talks of the culture of being Puerto Rican living in New Jersey while she was growing up. She uses multiple examples of how her culture seemed to follow her throughout her life. She also shows the downsides of being a latina and how she overcame these struggles. One method she uses in order to show her audience the struggle that her and other latina girls could go through in there lives, is appeal to ethos.

While reading the “Women Hollering Creek” I clearly see how patriarchy dominates the story. Perfectly describing a social system where the male rules and distributes privileges, where men are the head of the family and women are seen as property, subservient and not allowed to exercise any control over their own lives, including marital and sexual control. Cleofila is from Mexico, where she is raised with traditional values in her culture. She grew up in an environment where she was easily influenced by the patriarch in her life, her father, and after she married she continues to be treated as property, when Cleofila is being physically abused by her husband Juan Pedro.

In the story “Woman Hollering Creek” Cisneros affirms,”The first time she had been so surprised she didn’t cry out or try to defend herself. She had always said she would strike back if a man, any man, were to strike her.” As Cleófilas’s problems with her spouse Juan Pedro intensify and the beatings become more frequent and severe, she does not fight back or break into tears. Although, Cleofilas does not defend herself the domestic rage within her simmers quietly before exploding all at once. As a result of physical and mental abuse Cleofilas wants to escape her marriage to seek a life like the ones in telenovelas. By the time Cleofilas is pregnant with their second child, her husband has taken to beating her regularly, as a way of coping with his frustration and powerlessness. Cleofilas has to deal with the suffering of living in a patriarchal and male dominated society where she had to depend upon her husband. As their relationship deteriorates, Cleófilas comes to realize that their marriage does not so she decides to leave Texas to start a new

Through the use 40 qualitative in-depth interviews Viruella-Fuentes examines the transnational practices of first-generation Mexican immigrant women as well as second generation women residing in a largely Mexican neighborhood in Southwest Detroit. The author argues that although women in this study do not really engage in transnational practices, but it is those transnational ties that contributes to the social and cultural resources that they have access when navigating their United States realities. I am interested in the gendered dimensions of these practices, for first generation women their priorities were to maintain ties and a sense of belonging, therefore with they enacted caregiving work that cut across borders, something that seems

The story illustrates the overlapping influences of women’s status and roles in Mexican culture, and the social institutions of family, religion, economics, education, and politics. In addition, issues of physical and mental/emotional health, social deviance and crime, and social and personal identity are

Women can always get out of a sticky situation, achieving freedom is a choice for all. “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros is a short story that involves a woman in a domestic partnership and her desire to escape with her two children, receiving freedom. After a clinic visit, she retrieves help escaping, she ends up crossing Woman Hollering Creek, feel more accomplished than ever and feeling power for the first time. The short story gives a lesson to everyone that they have freedom. This is demonstrated through setting and symbolization and characterization.

In “Woman Hollering Creek”, Sandra Cisneros writes about domestic abuse of Latin women. In this short story Cisneros asserts that Cleofilas, the main character in the story is subject to social, emotional and economic dependence on her husband Juan Pedro. Cleofilas is another victim of Mexican “machismo”. Because of its state of marginalization and domestic violence Cleofinas evade reality, and that evasion will cause emotional instability canceling her initiative to get out of that oppressive life. Cisneros addresses the issue of marginalization and the domestic abuse that still remains in the Latin patriarchal society. In this society the woman is denigrated, humiliated, marginalized, even beaten by a man. This abuse by intimate partner often

In Amigas and Amantes: Sexually Nonconforming Latinas Negotiate Family, Katie Acosta explores how Latina women, who sexually identify as lesbian, bisexual, or queer, struggle to create and maintain family ties. Recalling the lived experiences of these sexually nonconformity Latinas, Acosta uses the theory of intersectionality to examine how the different identity markers (such as race, gender, age, sex, etc.) profoundly affects the way these Latinas experience their family. In this essay, we’ll take a look at how intersectionality illuminates that struggle for visibility by studying the differences found in religion, class, country of origin, and heteronormativity. Furthermore, we’ll be analyzing how sexually nonconforming Latinas

In the story “Woman Hollering Creek” Sandra Cisneros explains the journey Cleofilas takes to escape her abusive husband, physically and emotionally. At the beginning of the story Cleofilas thought life was about finding your true love and living happily ever after. Then when she moved away, and her husband started beating her she realized life was more than living like this. The theme of the story is the feeling of disaffection or self-displacement. Cisneros uses the character Cleofilas to heighten the theme of the story. Cleofilas struggles to leave her husband, Juan because she feels that her father wouldn’t allow her to come back. At the end of the story she gets tired of the abuse and plans to

There are decisions made that one later regrets, Making the wrong decision allows one to learn from their mistake and move on. Many people often view their life as the ones seen in soap operas and ignorantly refuse to face the life of reality. In addition, this creates one to make decisions that one never knew they would even make. In relation to Cleofilas, she made a decision to stay in an abusive relationship in which she later regrets. Her hopes and expectations about marriage were high having inspiration from the romance in telenovelas. She refuses to leave her husband Juan Sanchez because of her passion from the telenovelas. The telenovelas is what keeps her from loving him. With that, Cleofilas loses her happiness and freedom once she marries Juan and moves to America with him. “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros portrays the dangers of escaping an unwanted reality by living in a fantasy world which creates wrong mistakes and regrets.

Society has categorized masculine and feminine roles and, as a result, both genders feel obliged to correspond to their roles. Moreover, society has created what is known as the “traditional household” life; which means, women stay-at-home take care of the kids, prepare food for the family and do all the household chores, while the male is the household provider, working to sustain the family. In “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman both convey women`s roles as being an obedient wife. For instance, Sandra Cisneros describes the story of a Mexican couple that crossed the border into the U.S. Throughout the story we discover Cleofilas is an abused woman and views her role as a woman

People believe that marriage is easy and is the key to love and happiness, but in reality marriage is harder than it looks. Everyone marries for different reasons, for good or for bad. People today don’t understand the meaning of marriage; it is more than just money and appearance. Seeing today’s world of marriage is being influenced by media shows like Jerry Springer, Judge Judy, and Murray makes you realize how society today identifies marriage different. Couples who live unmarried will be happier and have more choices than those that are married in agreement with Catherine Newman’s essay called I Do. Not.: Why I Won’t Marry in the book “Acting Out Culture: Reading and Writing “, by: James S. Miller. Catherine Newman is a writer and an author

Then, he stared to control her dressing habits. She was told to wear clothes that she did not like and not use any makeups at all. When she tried to wear short dress, he called her “slutty”. If some men asked her something in the store or restaurant his behavior would become more out of the control, and he would yield, humiliating her in front of that person. He stopped her from calling her family, using the excuse that she did not need to spend any money. The first time he hit her was when she got home late from a doctor’s appointment. As soon as she walked in, he grabbed her arm, when she tried to get free, he took her by the hair, pushing her back and for screaming at her like the devil for being late. Finally, he locked her in the room for almost twenty-four hours. The day after he felt so sorry for what had happened and asked her for forgiveness. She wanted to get away, returned back to Nicaragua, but she was scared, confused, emotionally exhausted from the man that was claiming to love her all this