Although the mainstream view of southwestern literature has historically been constructed as the domain of Anglo writers, such as Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy, Mexican American and other ethnic minority writers certainly have been a significant part of the cultural milieu of the US Southwest. As David King Dunaway asserts in Writing the Southwest, “[T]he core, or canon, of contemporary Southwestern literature (if not the bestseller lists) is solidly multiethnic, a reflection of a Southwestern, and indeed American, social reality which publishers have only belatedly acknowledged” (xxii). Among this multiethnic canon of US southwestern literature are Chicana/o, or Mexican American, writers such as the highly acclaimed author Sandra Cisneros.
Although born in Chicago and raised there as well as in Mexico City, Sandra Cisneros can rightfully be considered a writer of the US Southwest. Cisneros lived in San Antonio and the central Texas area for several years (Saldívar-Hull 105), and the region certainly crept into her work, such as in her short story collection Woman Hollering Creek, featuring places such as San Antonio and Seguin, Texas. Cisneros' work is also of the Southwest not only because of her Texas connection, but also because of her transnational connections to Mexico and the border region between Mexico and the US. While writers such as Rodolfo Anaya may have laid groundwork for situating southwestern Chicano experience in the American literary imagination, Cisneros infuses Mexican American women's fictional narratives into the US southwestern canon. Cisneros' works are among the Chicana/o texts that “help reconceive the region as multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural” (Wrede 98). By producing narratives that situate Mexican Americans as transnational inhabitants of the US Southwest, Cisneros expands the geographic and metaphoric boundaries of what southwestern can mean.
One of the defining features of Sandra Cisneros' work is its emphasis on the interlocking struggles of existing in the US/Mexico borderlands, of being a woman in a male-dominated world, and being of Mexican descent in an Anglo-centric US. Responding to these struggles, Cisneros' young female protagonists enact various forms of Chicana-feminist cultural critique. Deborah L. Madsen remarks that “Chicana feminism has arisen largely from this need to contest the feminine stereotypes that define machismo, while at the same time identifying and working against the shared class and racial oppression that all Chicanos/as—men, women and children—experience” (108). Chicana cultural theorist Gloria Anzaldúa describes her own response to navigating life in the US/Mexico borderlands as strategically taking elements of her various cultures and making something new of them. In Borderlands/La Frontera, she asserts her form of Chicana feminism: “I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture—una cultura mestiza—with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own “feminist architecture” (Anzaldúa 44). Through resisting dominant ideas about gendered limitations and Chicana biculturalism, Cisneros weaves such a feminist architecture throughout her writing in various genres, such as novels, short stories, children's books, essays, and poetry. These narrative strategies interplay to allow for imagining new possibilities for self-construction for Cisneros' Chicana protagonists, particularly in her books Woman Hollering Creek and Caramelo.
Chicana Resistance in “Woman Hollering Creek”
The title story of Woman Hollering Creek examines the struggles of a young woman from Mexico who falls in love with a Mexican American man from Texas and naively expects him to whisk her away from poverty to a lavish American dream. Not knowing the exact details of her fiancé's line of work or the town where they will live, Cleófilas imagines Seguin, Texas—in reality, a small rural town—through the romantic lens of the telenovelas (Mexican soap operas) she watches on television: “Seguín, Tejas. A nice sterling ring to it. The tinkle of money. She would get to wear outfits like the women on the tele” (Cisneros, Woman Hollering 45). After they marry and move to Seguin, Cleófilas' husband unexpectedly starts physically abusing her. By setting up Cleófilas' Mexican family home as a safe place compared to her home north of the US border, Cisneros' representation challenges the popularized misconception that Mexican men are somehow more patriarchal or domineering than American or Mexican American men: “In her own home her parents had never raised a hand to each other or to their children” (47). The story also subverts the dominant narrative of Mexicans going north for a “better life,” as Cleófilas decides to return to the safety of her father's home in Mexico.
Cisneros cleverly manages Cleófilas' response to the abusive situation by reworking the folkloric legend of la Llorona. La Llorona, the Weeping Woman or Wailing Woman, “is an imporant part of Mexican storytelling traditiona on both sides of the US/Mexican border” (D. Perez ix). La Llorona, according to folk legend, is a ghostly woman said to haunt bodies of water, such as creeks and lakes. Various versions of the tale abound, but in many versions, la Llorona, out of misguided mercy or vengeance, has drowned her children and now roams around wailing for them. Across many variations of the story, a man is somehow involved, such as a husband who has abandoned or abused the woman who becomes la Llorona.
When Cleófilas and her husband first drive across Woman Hollering Creek as newlyweds traveling to Seguin, the husband refers to the creek as “La Gritona,” (the shouting woman) a synonym for la Llorona (D. Perez 18), and Cleófilas wonders if the woman yells because of “pain or rage” (Cisneros, Woman Hollering 47). After the husband becomes abusive, Cleófilas struggles with what she should do. At a doctor's visit, a medical professional and her friend agree to help Cleófilas and her child leave her abusive situation by giving her a ride to the bus station so that she can return home to Mexico. The women make a plan to help Cleófilas leave her husband, and when she does, she lets out a loud wail of relief as she crosses back over the creek towards her home in Mexico. Cleófilas herself becomes the wailing woman; however, she escapes the fate of the ghostly Llorona of the cultural myth and instead becomes a figure of Chicana women's agency, connecting with other women to push back against patriarchal violence.
As Cisneros reworks the Llorona tale, she uses some of her linguistic techniques to render a particularized version of a widespread cultural myth. While readers familiar with Mexican culture would be familiar with la Llorona, Cisneros instead titles the story in English. Calling the story “Woman Hollering Creek” connects the setting to its specific geographic location in central Texas. The term “hollering” differs from the more common translations of la Llorona as the “wailing” or “weeping” woman. This defamilariazes the name, allowing readers to question the story's possible connection to the myth until the small hints gather into a direct confirmation when Cleófilas wonders, “Perhaps La Llorona is the one they named the creek after” (Cisneros, Woman Hollering 51).
Cisneros deploys other linguistic twists of phrase througouth the story. Some of the word choices in the story might seem random to non-bilingual Spanish and English readers. For instance, Cisneros intermixes English with Spanish terms to construct sentences such as the following: “…who doesn't care at all for music or telenovelas or romance or roses or the moon floating peraly over the arroyo” (Woman Hollering 49). Cisneros also uses Spanglish colloquialisms such as “Bueno bye” (55), a common, yet humorous, literal translation of “goodbye” that is used casually instead of “adiós.” Cisneros uses a particularized mix of Spanglish, Spanish, and English terms to center the experience of her bilingual protagonist struggling to gain power over her life. This bilingual approach pushes against linguistic and literary conventions of mainstream US American literature, reminding readers that a Chicana story taking place in the US Southwest may require a multilingual approach.
Notably, Cleófilas' narrative is one of negotiating differential power not only between women and men, but also between cultures. The story takes place in an area marked by historical layers of colonization, including Spanish colonization of indigenous peoples starting in the 1500s, the wresting of the Texas region from Mexico in 1836, and subsequently fraught racial relations between Anglos and Mexicans (for a history of this region, see David Montejano's Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986). Indeed, the region that provides the story's setting can be considered what Mary Louise Pratt has referred to as a “contact zone.” Contact zones denote “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other” (Pratt 24). Contextualized within this historical backdrop of colonization, Cleófilas personal struggle against domestic violence perpetuated by her American husband can be read as a struggle aginst a form of gendered colonization. As Rolando Pérez notes, “[M]any Latino/a writers see the linguistic struggle as inseparable from other social struggles” (95). Mixing languages to account for Chicana/o experience allows Cisneros to participate in “actively creating new forms of American expression” (R. Pérez 96) by using a common bilingual practice and making it her own.
On Cisneros' Novel Caramelo
In the novel Caramelo, another young Chicana protagonist navigates the competing pulls between cultural gender norms and linguistic conventions. Caramelo tells a story made of many stories, told through multiple voices, and woven together as an intertextual epic adventure from one generation to the next, one country to the next. The protagonist and narrator is Celaya Reyes, called “Lala,” the only daughter in a family of seven children. Her father is Mexican, and her mother is Mexican American. The family lives in Chicago and travels back and forth each summer to Mexico City, her father's homeland, to visit his mother, “the Awful Grandmother.” Lala's character assumes the role of storyteller, recounting the family's history through their travels to and from the US and Mexico and their eventual settling in San Antonio. While Lala tells her stories, she is often interrupted by the grandmother's voice, who critiques Lala's storytelling and sometimes takes over the narration. In the multigenerational saga, the Reyes family's story moves from the young Lala to her grandmother's earlier life, to Lala's parents and her father's siblings. As a Bildungsroman, the narrative tells a bicultural coming-of-age story by moving recursively back and forth to Lala's as she grows and serves as a central figure in the family's transnational saga.
Along the way, Lala challenges gendered expecations placed upon her as a young Chicana. For example, Lala disobeys her family when they attempt to forbid her to interact with Candelaria, a peasant girl in Mexico who, Lala eventually learns, is her father's secret “illegitimate” child and, therefore, her sister. Lala's interaction with a darker Mexican girl of a lower socioeconimic class would be considered “unladylike” (Heredia 46) or inappropriate for her supposed middle-class station as compared to Candelaria's status as a member of an underclass. Lala's family's attitudes against consorting with darker, poorer Mexicans highlights the racism within Mexican culture and connects its enforcement to social expectations around gender.
Lala also has to contend with her family's imposition of the virgin/whore dichotomy, which dictates that young women must abide by strict gendered codes of propriety or risk being seen as “whores” or “putas.” When Lala intends to run off with her boyfriend, her mother lays out the social consequences: “If you leave your father's house without a husband, you are worse than a dog. You aren't my daughter, you aren't a Reyes…. If you leave alone you leave like, and forgive me for saying this but it's true, como una prostituta. Is that what you want the world to think?” (Cisneros, Caramelo 360). Lala leaves anyway, at least temporarily, but separates from her boyfriend and returns to her family.
The grandmother's storyline exposes another gendered struggle. As “The Awful Grandmother” ages, she notices that “Men no longer looked at her” (Cisneros, Caramelo 347). She worries that “society no longer gave her much importance after her role of mothering was over” (347). Feeling her social value wane as her social role as mother is no longer valued, the grandmother's observation reveals the limited options available to Chicanas.
Besides the gendered struggles, the characters also face struggles as Chicanos existing in multiple cultures and geographic spaces. The plot follows the Reyes' family's annual road trip from Chicago to Mexico City, allowing for expression of the multiple cultural geographies inhabited by the Chicana/o characters. The primary geographies in the novel are Chicago as representative of a Chicana/o center within the US and Mexico City as homeland. Later in the novel, the Reyes family moves to San Antonio, which becomes a third home, a convergence in the borderlands. Both of Lala Reyes' parents see each other as from “the other side” or “el otro lado.” This positioning of the parents as being from or on opposite “sides” creates a space for the dynamics of interpersonal drama, cultural representations, linguistic interplay, and bicultural identity formation by the young protagonist as a Chicana. Lala describes her experience of her two parents as two opposing sides: “For a long time I thought the eagle and the serpent on the Mexican flag were the United States and Mexico fighting. And then, for an even longer time afterward, I thought of the eagle and the serpent as the story of Mother and Father” (Cisneros, Caramelo 235). Lala describes her parents as having “lots of fights” that center around issues such as “the Mexicans from this side compared to the Mexicans from that side” (235).
Setting up this construct of the two parents as the bearers of “opposing” geographies and cultures, Cisneros weaves a narrative that engages in what can be described as “simultaneous intra- and intercultural critiques” (Villa 248) of Anglo, Mexicano, and Chicano cultures. The parents as representative of their respective countries is complicated by their shifts in which “side” they identify with and which aspects of each side's culture they are accepting, rejecting, or otherwise critiquing/examining. For example, the Mexican father, Inocencio Reyes, at one point says about the US, “this great country has given me so much” (Cisneros, Caramelo 245). The Mexican American mother, Zoila, responds with a less than subtle critique of the US: “Great country, my ass! If they ever get to Toto's number [in the Vietnam draft lottery], I'm taking him personally to Mexico, Mother says, disgusted” (245). The mother goes on to say that “all the brown and black faces are up on the front line,” and that the situation seems like “a government conspiracy” (245). At one point, Zoila says that she “can't stand…Mexicans” (353) even though she is married to a Mexican man and is herself of Mexican ethnicity/origin; at another point, Inocencio is “cursing all Chicanos for acting like Chicanos and giving Mexico a bad name” (379). Through these intra- and intercultural critiques, Cisneros captures the quite complex challenges of negotiating life as an immigrant and as an ethnic “Other” in a hegemonic Anglo-US.
The daughter's history is introduced into the novel in a chapter entitled “All Parts from Mexico, Assembled in the U.S.A., or I am Born,” contributing to the positioning of the characters as competing cultural signifiers and Lala as the Chicana hybrid, torn between both of her parent's cultures. As a Bildungsroman, the novel portrays the coming of age of Lala in a circular, nonlinear narrative that mimics a sense of ping-pong, a push-pull, bouncing from one culture and geographical center to another; it also creates an expanding sense of a complex cultural identity through Lala's development as a Chicana who is bicultural/bilingual.
Many of the chapters in Caramelo have footnotes, in which the narrator provides either commentary on narrative or authorial intentions, translations of Spanish idioms, or historical or geographical references. For example, in the chapter called “Neither with Your Nor Without You” (Cisneros, Caramelo 222), a chapter barely over six pages is followed by a three-page footnote. The footnote gives historical context for characters based on actual lives, a lengthy example to explain an idiom, and a history of Carranza's Grocery and Market, presumably an actual San Antonio locale, which the narrator, blurring the lines between Lala the narrator and Cisneros the author, says she “recommended highly until a fire snuffed them out of business” (230). This type of aside acknowledges the reader's presence, as well as the author's, and it creates an oral storytelling quality as part of the intertextual conversations and weavings. This same footnote contains comments on the questionable veracity of the stories in the chapter: “My friend's mother, who still lives in the Colonia Roma and was neighbors with the Vasconcelos family in the forties and fifties, told me this story but made me promise never to tell anyone, which is why I am certain it must be true, or, at the very least, somewhat true” (Mermann-Jozwiak 230).
Drawing on Mexican and Chicano cultures, the text also includes lyrics from popular songs as part of its intertextual construction. The opening chapter begins with an epigraph with song lyrics that set the stage for the initial story of the Reyes family's visit to Acapulco. Another chapter contains the entire lyrics of a song in Spanish and in English; the lyrics to “Júrame” (“Promise Me”) are followed by a note that the chapter is “To be accompanied by the scratchy 1927 version of ‘Júrame,’ as recorded by José Mojica, the Mexican Valentino” and includes a description of the singer: “[I]magine a voice like Caruso, a voice like purple velvet with gold satin tassels, a voice like a bullfighter's bloody jacket, a voice like a water-stained pillow bought at the Lagunilla flea market embroidered with ‘No Me Olvides’” (Cisneros, Caramelo 183). Some chapters simply have references to song titles, such as “Por un amor,” or to other popular singers, such as Lola Beltrán. Other “texts,” symbols of pop culture, and iconic figures embedded in the text include references to Pedro Infante movies, Buster Keaton movies, and many references to Mexican fotonovelas (serial cartoons, commonly referred to as graphic novels or comic books in the US), such as La familia Burrón. One very brief (one paragraph) chapter, entitled “Fotonovelas” (63) includes a lengthy footnote consisting entirely of a list of the fotonovelas that “The Awful Grandmother” has saved for her son.
As in Woman Hollering Creek, Cisneros engages in an interplay of multiple languages in Caramelo. One prevalent example of linguistic experimentation involves literal translations from Spanish to English. For example, characters that would be called “tía Güera” or “tío Gordo” in Chicano or Mexicano circles are called “Aunty Light-Skin” and “Uncle Fat-Face.” Another example occurs in the direct translation of common phrases and idioms, such as the title of a popular Spanish song sung at birthday celebrations: instead of “Las Mañanitas,” Cisneros uses “The Little Mornings.” Reviewer Margaret Randall says of this strategy: “[T]he meaning beneath the meaning rises up, grabs the reader and shakes her or him into awareness.” On the other hand, the literal translations provided in English without being accompanied by the original phrase in Spanish seems to privilege one language over the other by not acknowledging, and thereby erasing in a sense, the cultural root of the idiom. Additionally, the nuances and layered meanings may be lost on a non-Spanish-speaking readership. Yet, by using these literal translations, the author provides character names and expressions that can be experienced as “universal” signifiers by a broad readership. For example, the grandmother is not “abuela” but “The Awful Grandmother,” representing any awful grandmother figure, perhaps regardless of geography or culture. While humorous, constructions such as “The Awful Grandmother” also serve as a form of truth-telling, allowing the young protagonist to subvert codes of propriety that demand nothing but “repectful” language from a young woman. Valerie Sayers also observes in Caramelo a blending of languages as it relates to the cultural combinations and geographic shifts in the novel's setting: “As they cross the border, Lala also crosses languages: ‘Toc, says the light switch in this country, at home it says click. Honk, say the cars at home, here they say tán-tán-tán’” (Sayers 7). Some of the linguistic border-crossings exemplify the unique, often humorous, language that can occur. For example, the speech of the father character is sometimes expressed as phonetic spellings of English terms as spoken by a Spanish-dominant speaker, such as “Más-güel” for “Maxwell” (Cisneros, Caramelo 295). The father also takes delight in making linguistic jokes, such as mixing English and Spanish words into intentionally comedic constructions.
According to Claire Joysmith, “Chicana/o texts that use these strategies create a poetics and politics that privileges bicultural and bilingual practices” (149). Joysmith notes, “We could say that “attentive outside readers” are, in a sense, acknowledged through the use of intratextual translational strategies” (150). In Caramelo, similar “intratextual translational strategies” can be found. Spanish phrases are sometimes explained in context or translated into English the first time they are used in the novel and then used without contextual or translational clues thereafter. The contextual clues are sometimes actual translations, as in the following example: [E]veryone knows Uncle Fat-Face by his Italian nickname, Rico, instead of Fat-Face or Federico, even though “rico” means “rich” in Spanish, and Uncle is always complaining that he is pobre, pobre” (Cisneros, Caramelo 10). Cisneros follows this up with a punchline: “It is no disgrace to be poor, Uncle says, citing the Mexican saying,—but it is very inconvenient” (10).
In some instances, the translations are accompanied by cross-cultural explanations: When “The Awful Grandmother” calls the Reyes kids “a bunch of malcriadas,” Lala the narrator explains that “She means ‘badly raised’” (Cisneros, Caramelo 70). After the grandmother has a stroke, Zoila (the mother, who has never gotten along with the grandmother, her mother-in-law) “finally dares to address her the way she feels fit. She calls her “tú,” the familiar “you, “ not “usted,” which is “like bowing” (342). In this way, the reader is provided not only a translation, but also an explanation and context for understanding the nature of authority and power relations as expressed through language within this Spanish-speaking family.
These intratextual translations make the text accessible to a monolingual English-speaking readership, while also allowing a bilingual readership to experience the layered nuances on a different level. Through these linguistic experimentations, as well as through the representations of the complex dynamics of culture and gender, Caramelo weaves a densely constructed narrative that makes a significant contribution to the body of southwestern Chicana/o literature.