Woman Hollering Creek - notes from lecture in Bergen

Short story “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros (the creek is called La Grittona)

Vocabulary

Hollering - crying out loud, scream, yell
creek – a narrow sheltered waterway
chores - daily household chores like shopping and cleaning task, job, duty, errand, thing to be done, burden;
hubbub  - noise, loud noise

bouquet - an attractively arranged bunch of flowers, especially one presented as a gift or carried at a ceremony
petticoat – underkjole
speckled – flekkete
pimple – spot
gauze - a transparent haze or film
salvage - retain, preserve, conserve; regain, win back, recoup, recapture, redeem, snatch.
“the bloody fork she used to salvage her good name”=?

doubloon- historic coin
husky - strong
whiskers – kinnskjegg
pecan - nøtt fra tresorten Carya illinoensis
brawl - rough or noisy fight or quarrel
hoot - buing, utpiping

Setting

Monclova Coahuia in Mexico (where Cleofilas lives in the beginning with her father and six brothers)

Seguin – in the US where she lives with her husband, Juan Pedro, and later also her son, Juan Pedrito.

Characters

Don Serafin – father
Cleofilas Enriqueta DeLeon Hernandez – daughter and bride – good with the sewing machine
6 brothers
Chela – maid of honor – (an unmarried noblewoman attending a queen or princess.) - forlovar
Juan Pedro Martinez Sanchez – husband
Juan Pedrito – her son

La Llorona – read about her here.

Theme

Point of view

Climax/turning point

Notes from professor’s lecture in Bergen:

Domestic abuse is about control and power; it is defined as a pattern of abusive behavior used to control a partner or a child. What we know is that 85% of domestic violence affect women. We also know that 20 people per minute experience this, and that 1/3 will be involved and 1/5 will experience extreme abuse. However, it is important to remember: IT CAN BE STOPPED!

“Woman Hollering Creek” is about personal choice, patriarchy, ie the power relationship between men and women, community, love and domestic abuse (themes). Sandra Cisneros is an “in-betweener”, and she writes about cultural hybridity conjoining, ie you are both Mexican and American, not just one or the other. The border crossings and the geography help establish the hybridity. She also writes about economic equality. An example from the text is when Cleofilas asks if Felice’s car is her husband’s, “She said she didn’t have a husband. The pickup was hers. She herself had chosen it. She herself was paying for it.”(p228)

Cisnero’s characters are simple and general, and therefore work for every reader. Moreover, they are bold and articulate in terms of needs, and they often show the reader a third way. In this case that it is possible to escape, not just to die or to stay.

There are several borders that are being crossed in the text, not just geographical ones. An example of this is found on page 222 when Cleofilas’ husband hits her the first time – a border has been crossed – and in this case Clofilas has crossed into a to her so far foreign country, ie the homeland of battered women. Another example is when Cleofilas realizes that there are free women in her world, “Can you imagine, when we crossed the arroyo she just started yelling like a crazy […].”(228) Finally, in the very last sentence, Cleofilas crosses another border, and her new identity is born “It was gurgling out of her own throat, a long ribbon of laughter, like water.”