What is Woman Hollering Creek about?
Like her novel, The House on Mango Street, published in 1983, which describes the lives of Mexican immigrants in a Chicago neighborhood, “Woman Hollering Creek” describes the lives of Mexicans who have crossed the border to live on “ el otro lado” —the other side—in the American Southwest.
What is a good study guide for Woman Hollering Creek?
Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics.
When was Woman Hollering Creek first published?
“Woman Hollering Creek” was first published in Sandra Cisneros ’s 1991 collection of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories.
What are the symbols in Woman Hollering Creek?
Additionally, there exist a number of symbols in woman hollering creek which Cisneros used as a helper in plotting the story line in addition to creating a literature impression in the story. For example, “the borders of all kinds” is a symbolic statement in the Woman Hollering Creek.
Where was Woman Hollering Creek filmed?
Seguin, TexasWoman Hollering Creek is a creek located in Central Texas. At one point, it crosses Interstate 10, between Seguin, Texas, and San Antonio, Texas.
What time period is Woman Hollering Creek set in?
A collection of 22 short stories and vignettes set in Mexico and the southwestern United States between the early 1900s and the late 1980s; published in English in 1991.
What is the conflict in Woman Hollering Creek?
The story is about a father wanting his daughter to get married and the conflict of the story is the abuse that she went through and trying to find a way out.
What is the theme of Woman Hollering Creek?
The theme of love as power is most apparent in some of the "Woman Hollering Creek" stories, but it appears even in Mango Street, in the lives of Esperanza's acquaintances and in her own youthful experience.
Where does Cleofilas move to at the beginning of in Woman Hollering Creek?
Cleofilas is obsessed with Spanish soap operas. She fantasizes about them and wants her life to be like that when she marries and moves to Texas with Juan Pedro.
What kind of character is Cleofilas?
The protagonist of “Woman Hollering Creek,” a woman who marries Juan Pedro and moves with him from Mexico to the United States despite her father's misgivings. Cleófilas yearns for passion, but when she starts her new life in America, she realizes she's married an abusive, slovenly man prone to drinking and abuse.
What do you learn about Cleofilas in the very first section of the story?
What do you learn about Cleófilas in the very first section of the story, which is told as a flashback? What are the contrasts between "then" and "now" that Cisneros establishes in this section? Cleófilas was raised without her mother and she had huge ideas about love and passion.
What role do the telenovelas play in Woman Hollering Creek?
“Woman Hollering Creek” expresses the ideals Ana Uribe associates with the Mexican telenovela, namely, the centrality of the patriarchal family and the obedience of the female protagonist.
Where and when was Cisneros born who are her parents and or siblings Where did she grow up go to school?
Sandra Cisneros was born December 20, 1954, in Chicago. Although she grew up mainly in Chicago, the family often visited her father's relatives in Mexico, and Cisneros would later say that she felt "displaced" during her childhood.
What is a common theme of Sandra Cisneros writing?
The themes in her writing include the meaning of home, belonging, crossing boundaries and cultural expectations of women. Her new memoir, In this interview, she talks about being connected to Mexico and to the United States, and how she hopes to be an ambassador passing between the two cultures.
What is the theme or central idea of The House on Mango Street?
The struggle for self-definition is a common theme in a coming-of-age novel, or bildungsroman, and in The House on Mango Street, Esperanza's struggle to define herself underscores her every action and encounter.
Author Biography
Plot Summary
- Cleofilas Enriqueta DeLeon Hernandez believes she will live happily ever after when her father consents to her marriage to Juan Pedro. She leaves her father and six brothers in Mexico and drives to “el otro lado”—the other side—with Juan Pedro to start a new life as his wife in a ramshackle house in a dusty little Texas town. Across a stream called Woman Hollering Creek, …
Characters
- Dolores
Dolores, whose name means “sorrow,” is Cleofilas’ neighbor on the right. She is a widow who lives in a house full of incense and candles, mourning her husband and two dead sons. She grows immense sunflowers and sad-smelling roses to decorate their small graves in the nearby cemet… - Felice
Felice is an independent, spirited woman who owns her own truck and who is willing to help other women in distress. Along with the clinic physician, Graciela, she conspires to help Cleofilas escape from her abusive husband. Felice is a woman who rejects traditional sex roles and fierce…
Themes
- Love and Passion
Cleofilas longs for “passion in its purest crystalline essence. The kind the books and songs and telenovelasdescribe when one finds, finally, the great love of one’s life, and does whatever one can, must do, at whatever cost.” Because, she believes, “to suffer for love is good. The pain all s… - Sex Roles
Women, in Cleofilas’ culture, are assigned to carefully circumscribed roles, as they are in most cultures. For example, she is given to Juan Pedro by her father, moves from her father’s house into her husband’s house, does not drive or have access to a car, and is isolated with her child t…
Style
- Point of View and Narration
The majority of “Woman Hollering Creek” is narrated in the third-person omniscient voice. The narrative voice that describes Cleofilas’s life in Mexico, her father and brothers, the women friends with whom she gossiped in her town, speaks in longer more lyrical sentences than the narrative … - Topics for Further Study
1. Research the folklore surrounding the mythical woman, La Llorona. How have Chicana writers redefined her as a role model for modem women? 2. Compare Gloria Anzaldua’s account of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards to the account in an encyclopedia or a world history textbo…
Historical Context
- Mexico: The Early Years
From the beginning of the fourteenth through the end of the fifteenth century, the Aztec people built an empire in what is now Mexico by conquering other tribes. Under Montezuma II, from 1502 until 1520, the empire reached its peak in the days before the arrival of the Spanish conquistado… - Post-Colonial Times
After three hundred years of colonial rule, Mexico, which at that time comprised much of what is now the southwest of the United States, won her independence from Spain, in 1821. In the 1848 treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American war, Mexico ceded all territory no…
Critical Overview
- Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories received much attention when it was published in 1991. It was explicated in several literary journals, including Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Frontiers, and Heresies, and won acclaim in the mainstream press. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Bebe Moore Campbell gave the collection a favorable review, …
Criticism
- Jennifer Hicks and Barbara Smith
Hicks has a Master’s Degree in English literature, and has written extensively for academic journals, and is CEO of WordsWork, a freelance writing firm that provides Web site content. Smith has Master’s Degrees in both bilingual studies and humanistic and behavioral studies. She has d… - What Do I Read Next?
1. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza(1987) by Gloria Anzaldua, a Chicana writer. This largely nonfiction volume also includes poetry. In it Anzaldua analyzes the experiences of Mexicans/Chicanos in the United States. 2. Latina: Women’s Voices from the Borderlands(1995) …
Sources
- Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza,Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987. Campbell, Bebe Moore. “Crossing Borders,” in The New York Times Book Review,May 26, 1991, pp. 6-7. Candelaria, Cordelia. “La Malinche, Feminist Prototype,” in Frontiers,Vol. 5, No. 2, 1980, pp. 1-6. Candelaria, Cordelia. “Letting La Llorona Go, or Re/reading History’s Tender Mercies,” in Heresies…
Further Reading
- Chavez, Lorenzo. “Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories,” in Hispanic,April, 1991, p. 52. Ponce, Merrihelen. “A Semblance of Order to Lives and Loves,” in Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women,Vol. 7, No. 2, Winter, 1991-92, pp. 40, 44. “Sandra Cisneros,” in Contemporary Literary Criticism,Volume 69, edited by Roger Matuz, Gale, 1992, pp. 143-56.