Cisneros, Style

In my last post I mentioned how I was able to read Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories quickly, which is thanks to Cisneros' unencumbered style and accessible language, the shortness of the stories and their ability to convey powerful emotions and vivid images succinctly, at least for the most part. But you can’t confuse a quick read with a simple read, because the more you examine this collection of stories, the more their sub-surface messages and clever narrative techniques emerge. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories is like a stylistic laboratory – it has a little bit of everything mixed into one powerful concoction. There are stories written in first and third person, stream-of-consciousness, little vignettes that capture a slice of someone’s life, and stories with a cast of characters and a plot with action. Some passages describe tender and beautiful scenes in poetic language and others are brutal or crass and use street language. But what makes this book great is not just the complex and varied style but the fact that there is always an underlying message – sometimes the message is clear and other times it’s obscured and you have to dig to get at it – you have to question each element in the passage and why it was written that way. It surprised me how much we were able to get out of our analysis of “The Marlboro Man” – how deceptively simple the passage was initially in comparison to what it had to offer. I would like to revisit other stories in more detail – even though I read them once I have the feeling that half of them is still lying under the surface.

Telenovela meets La Malinche

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.

Overview

This has been an interesting class for me so far, having never read Chicano literature. Progressing through the texts we have come across similar themes, but what is most interesting is how the representation of each theme contributes to the greater message about Chicano identity in each text. For example, we talked last class about the differences between …y no se lo tragó la tierra and The Salt of the Earth, and how the former found the root of Chicano exploitation in racism and the latter found it in class. Who Would Have Thought It?, …y no se lo tragó la tierra, and the pieces by Jose Marti posed questions without solutions: is the true home of mixed-raced people in Mexico or the U.S., how can the incessant toiling of campesinos be ended, or can Latin Americans be content in the “soulless” culture of the U.S.? The film, on the other hand, established that while racial tensions exist, class is at the root of exploitation, and that liberation lies in unionization. In the second half of the course we can be sure that different questions about Chicano history/identity/destiny will surface. I am particularly looking forward to the subject of Chicana subjectivity that will come out in Woman Hollering Creek.

El Pueblo as Protagonist

I really enjoyed ... y no se lo trago la tierra. The anecdotes are well written individually, with their tales of maturation from childhood and the ironic and heartbreaking situations the characters find themselves in, but the way that Rivera weaves them all together is masterfully done. It took me awhile to appreciate the structure of the book because at first all I could see was a collection of unrelated fragments. At first the protagonist feels that he had lost a year, and he feels unsettled and disoriented, but at the end he is at peace because “se dio cuenta de que en realidad no había perdido nada.” The book is a process through which Rivera draws upon the experiences of many fictional characters to describe the authentic Chicano experience. This series of random events, when seen together at a distance, form a portrait of a people.

Given the importance of this narrative technique, can we even say that the boy is the central character? We do not even know his name. But we do know the names of Ramon and Juanita, the quarreling lovers, the children of the unfortunate Garcia family, Chuy who died at war. We also hear their voices – the book is largely composed of criss-crossing conversations, fragments of dialogue by unknown speakers, stories related second-hand by gossiping neighbors. The events in the book are the collective life of el pueblo and they are narrated through its many voices. There are many identities and attitudes within this collective, this much is clear from the penultimate chapter when we overhear the private thoughts of the stranded migrants. Some angrily curse their situation and others let their thoughts wander peacefully – you can see both resignation and rebellion, but always hope of something better. I’ve never read a book where you could say that an entire group was the protagonist instead of a single character. Could anyone give me any other examples of books written this way?

Things Without Names

... y no se lo trago la tierra is probably the best example I've ever come across of why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Far from what its ridiculous cover image and large font would imply, the book contains a complexly crafted series of anecdotes and its narrative techniques and weighty themes keep the reader actively thinking.

One thing that interested me about the book so far was the relation between naming something and its existence. In the first half of the book we see things that are unnamed turn out to exist and things that are named actually do not exist. As children grow up they must reconcile between the world as their parents taught them and the the world as they personally experience it. Until he stumbled upon the couple the boy did not know about sex, it had been completely absent from his world except as a vague notion of sin, and soon he will discover the name of what he has witnessed. On the other hand, an entity that was taken for granted in his family, the Devil, turns out to not exist at all. The boy calls out to the Devil and curses him, expecting all hell to break loose, and nothing happens. Nothing exists behind the name.

I like the book's unique perspective due to being written through the eyes of a child. If we think of Who Would Have Thought It?, for example, its critique of contemporary societal evils is very direct and is accompanied by analysis through the characters' dialogue. In ... y no se lo trago la tierra we get to know the social context through the lens of a child - the racism of white society towards Chicanos comes through in a bully's remarks, most likely copied from his parents - and the labour conditions suffered by rural Chicanos in Texas comes through in the boy's grief and rage at his brother's near death on the fields and his mother's resignation to a life of endless toil. There is no analysis of the social context here, only brief and powerful anecdotes.

El Titán del Norte

The fact that En Los Estados Unidos possesses the narrative force to stir up the latent sense of wonder in the reader over the seemingly mundane object of a bridge is what makes this passage so supremely non-tedious. While passing through the iconic landscape of New York, Marti is overcome with “agradecimiento” for his fellow man, the architects whose pencils delineated the skyscrapers towering over his head, and goes so far as be “religiosamente conmovida” by the vast forms and structural aesthetic of the bridge. We might agree that the Brooklyn Bridge is a fine and useful structure, but Jose Marti reminds us, in language that bowls you over with the force of its excitement, that this bridge is one of the finest expressions of humanity.

Some may think it is merely some ugly slabs of concrete put together in response to a practical need. But: a human being does not have to feel dwarfed by nature when standing before an “inmenso” and “gigantesco” structure of our own creation. With our ingenuity we can build to the scale of mountain-sized mammoths and fashion objects of cyclopean proportions. Nor do human beings have to feel that their lives are so fleeting when we can leave such a triumphant mark of our presence. Look at how the foundations of the bridge “muerden la roca en el fondo del rio”: these structures are rooted to the earth.

But there is also evidence the Marti considers these structures not accomplishments of humanity at large, but profoundly American accomplishments. The fact that this reading package opened with an ode to a bridge recalled another traveler who famously recorded his impressions of the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville, who I remember opining that bridges were America’s cathedrals. This identification with bridges may have been part of the developing American psyche that sought to differentiate itself from Europe: it saw itself as vigorous, honest, and hard-working. As a Latin American, Jose Marti is also turning away from Europe, and venerating what is essentially American. He marvels at the spectacle of Coney Island and writes swooningly about the iconic Statue of Liberty. However, how Latin Americans will negotiate their own identity in relation to this northern titan is unclear. Other than the Americas sharing the ideal of liberty, which Marti calls “la madre del mundo nuevo,” he does not indicate exactly how this United States he describes relates to the nascent literary public in Latin America who would have been reading this text.

Tea with Maria

So I'm joining the stragglers writing this blog on Monday night - it took me awhile to plow through to the end of Who Would Have Thought It? I still find fault with Ruiz de Burton's writing style, somehow she managed to bog the book down with excess verbiage while leaving central characters undeveloped, but I can say this: If I was a young lady in the U.S. circa 1872, she'd be my first choice to sit down with and rail about the patriarchy over a nice spot of tea. Ruiz de Burton is a fascinating person who I enjoyed catching a glimpse of throughout the novel. This is a woman who has passionate opinions on every facet of the society she lives in - and pulls no punches in calling people out on their ostentation and hypocrisy. Though the writing is lackluster, it is occasionally funny, and provides lots of food for thought.

I appreciated the diversity of social issues that Ruiz de Burton commented on, both indirectly through characters and directly as narrator. In the second half of the book we find, amongst all of the melodrama, a searing indictment of war that maims and degrades the average man while lining the pockets of the rich, a mockery of the nouveau riche and their superficial lives, and a cynical portrayal of gender relations. Though Ruiz de Burton doesn't offer any answers to these societal conundrums, she must at least be commended for satirizing them.

Before I found out what the title refers to, that shriek of Mrs. Norval, I thought that it was an apt response to the duplicity of appearances which is a central theme in the book. The little "black" orphan is a white Mexican-American with trunks of gold, the abolitionist and pious Mrs. Norval is in fact racist and has an affair while it is still uncertain if her husband is dead, and the "two worthy reverends" are ruthlessly conniving - who would have thought it? Ruiz de Burton delights in uncovering "rogues" in the most unexpected places.

As to whether she was a feminist is an interesting and difficult question - just because a woman takes a look around and sees the structures that oppress her it doesn't mean that she's a feminist. Did she purposely make her critique indirect so that her novel would have greater legitimacy or was she merely writing a clever satire without a single emancipatory urge in her? I can't answer that but I do know that women in earlier time periods, and in even more suffocating social conditions, have more directly and persuasively shown women's intelligence and independence. Check out Sor Juana circa 1648 - there's a woman who doesn't beat about the bush.