Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros



Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros

Summary

Woman Hollering Creek is a short story by author Sandra Cisneros. Cisneros is an award-winning author of Chicana and feminist literature, who besides short stories and novels, has also written poetry. Woman Hollering Creek was first published in 1991 in the collection of short stories called Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. The topic of the short story is the lives of Mexican immigrants who have crossed the border to live on the other side in the American Southwest.

In particular, Woman Hollering Creek tells the story of Cleofilas, a young and nave Mexican girl who believes she will live happily ever after when her father agrees for her to marry Juan Pedro. She leaves her father and six brothers behind in Mexico to pursue a better life for her and Juan Pedro in a little town in Texas. Living across a stream called Woman Hollering Creek, Cleofilas finds out the hard way that marriage is not always like a fairytale or as it is portrayed on soap operas. Instead she leads a boring, lonely and desperate life, with an abusive and controlling husband and no one to turn to.

With the help of numerous flashbacks, we learn more and more about the story of Cleofilas, from the time before she was ever married to Juan Pedro until the time she finally returns to Mexico. Even though Cleofilas farther consents in the marriage between her and Juan Pedro, he already knows probably no good will come from it and one day she might return back home. He tries to tell her that by letting her know he will never abandon her, but I was thinking if he cared so much he should not have consented to the marriage in the first place.

They have only been married for a short while, when Juan Pedro starts to hit her and slowly he becomes more and more abusive. He has a bad temper and nothing she does is ever good enough for him. Juan Pedro also starts cheating on her after she has her first child. She just takes it all in strive. With no job, no car or any knowledge of the English language, she is stuck at their house and at the mercy of her husband. This is so not the soap opera version of married life that she had envisioned.

I like this short story a lot. It paints such a detailed and vivid picture of the life of Mexican immigrants. Not just about their struggle to make a better life for themselves in the United States, but also about their backgrounds and culture that make it possible for such tragic events to take place. Reading Woman Hollering Creek I could not help but feel for Cleofilas and empathize with her situation, hoping she would find a way to escape from her marriage.

Introduction

In describing "Women Hollering Creek," Sandra Cisneros uses hidden examples to show the pain, anguish, and despair a battered woman ...