Terri St. John
Minority Literature
Dr. Craig White
November 26, 2002

Cisneros, Erdrich, and Morrison – Ethnic Diversities and Correlations

Obviously, an author of the same ethnicity as his or her characters adds credibility to the work. Of the three minorities, Mexican American, Native American, and African American, Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich, and Toni Morrison respectively depict lives and attitudes unique to their cultures; however, their works prove that ethnic literature is not restrictive literature in the sense that only members of their own cultures are capable of understanding and appreciating not only their message, but also their craft. Cisneros’ short stories, “Woman Hollering Creek” and “Bien Pretty,” illustrate the feelings of social dislocation and ambivalence Mexican Americans are known to characterize; Erdrich’s The Antelope Wife, is rich with Native American markers and explicit in its portrayal of loss and survival; and Morrison’s, The Bluest Eye, epitomizes the African American experience and “dream.” This paper will first identify the ethnic themes specific to Mexican, Native, and African American cultures and subsequently, the common minority themes of extended families and mysticism. Finally, universally recognized themes including the quest for selfhood, human weakness, and the victimization of loved ones – themes that transcend all ethnic boundaries – will be discussed.

            The Mexican American characteristics of social dislocation and ambivalence concentrate on determining which culture is actually theirs, Mexican or American. Are they Mexicans or Americans or simply a combination of the two? In Cisneros’ short story, “Woman Hollering Creek,” Cleofilas’ dislocation took the form of exchanging a life of friends, family, and her beloved Mexican soap-operas for a semi-isolated existence in a foreign country among strangers (without a television) and the realization that the man she expected to fulfill her romantic fantasy of “[. . .] passion in its purest crystalline essence” (44), will make love to her and then beat her while she is pregnant.

Cleofilas also experiences ambivalent feelings about womanhood when she encounters her knight in shining armor, Felice – a female in a pickup truck. Felice is unlike any of the traditionally proper Mexican women Cleofilas has known all her life. Felice does not have a husband, drives and owns her own pickup truck, and she says the word, “viejas” (55).  As she drives her pickup across Woman Hollering Creek, toward Mexico this time, she shocks Cleofilas even more when she, “[. . .] let out a yell as loud as any mariachi” (55), explaining that crossing the creek makes her want to yell like Tarzan. Felice’s uninhibited “holler” was one of empowerment – not one of anger or pain, a fact that both astonishes Cleofilas and provides her with a female perspective alien to anything she had known before. When she entered Seguin, the creek symbolized the boundary separating Mexican and American cultures and her subconscious expectation of a miserable female fate,  “[ . . ] no one could say whether the woman had hollered from anger or pain“ (46). However, when she crosses it again to return to Mexico, it symbolizes the beginning of Cleofilas’ quest for selfhood and her transformation from a traditional Mexican female to that of a slightly more liberated Mexican American woman.

In “Bien Pretty,” Lupe struggles, like Cleofilas, with attaining a balance between Mexican and American cultures. However, Lupe’s dislocation is emphasized by her own ambivalent nature. Cisneros begins the narrative by explaining Lupe’s inability to be content, moving from one relationship to the next, finally hauling her Tae Kwon Do uniform and Latin tapes from California to Texas in a quest to find herself. In addition to the Tae Kwon Do uniform and Latin tapes, her ambiguity is exhibited in the cultural mix of California’s liberal sophistication and Texas’ dominant machismo mentality. More emphasis is placed on her ambiguity with the mention of the I Ching in the passage, “Sure, I knew I was heading for trouble the day I agreed to come to Texas. But not even the I Ching warned me what I was in for when Flavio Munguia drove up in the pest-control van” (141). Lupe is a modern American woman desperately trying to define herself through her relationships and the fragments of various cultures that garnish her life. She has so much trouble with the Mexican/American dynamic that she is determined to find a suitable alternative.

Lupe’s ambiguity is starkly contrasted with Flavio’s self-confidence as illustrated when she confronts him about the way he dresses:

“What you are, sweetheart, is a product of American imperialism, “ and plucked at the alligator on his shirt.

“I don’t have to dress in a sarape and sombrero to be Mexican,” Flavio said. “I know who I am.” (151)

Infuriated at his statement, she thinks, “I wanted to leap across the table, throw the Oaxacan black pottery pieces across the room, swing from the punched tin chandelier

[. . .] I wanted to be Mexican at that moment, but it was true. I was not Mexican” (152). The sad, frustrated tone of this statement emphasizes Lupe’s yearning for the “absoluteness” a Mexican or American identity would provide. It also implies her negative feelings towards an obscure “Mexican American” identity. 

Another example of Lupe’s ambiguous nature is her attitude toward the Spanish and English languages. After having sex with Flavio, whose native tongue is Spanish, Lupe equates her sexual pleasure with the Spanish language by thinking

That language. That sweep of palm leaves and fringed shawls. That startled fluttering, like the heart of a goldfinch or a fan. Nothing sounded dirty or hurtful or corny. How could I think of making love in English again? English with its starched r’s and g’s. English with its crisp linen syllables. English crunchy as apples, resilient and still as sailcloth. (153)

Whether this language comparison is a metaphor for her romantic feelings toward Flavio and the disappointment she experienced with her prior lovers or simply a language statement is unclear.

Although Cleofilas and Lupe are very different women, both struggle to find their place within two worlds. Cisneros’ scintillating, sassy style of writing combined with her identification with both Mexican and dominant American cultures enable her to humorously portray issues that support the literary themes of Mexican American literature.

Although Cisneros craftily writes Mexican American themes of dislocation and ambiguity, she uses humor to relay the messages.  On the other hand, Native American (NA) author Louise Erdrich’s work has an underlying sense of hope as she develops the NA loss and survival theme in the lives of Blue Prairie Woman and her descendants. Therefore, in addition to the universal themes that will be discussed later, these authors draw upon common human emotions in order to connect with their readers.

In The Antelope Wife, Blue Prairie Woman was known as Apijigo Bakaday (So Hungry), as a child and young woman, because she had an insatiable appetite. To avoid critical eyes watching her eat, she escaped to the forest where, one day, a deer approached her as she cooked a rabbit. When she looked into the eyes of the deer, she felt “[h]is heart shone right out of his eyes” (56), and she understood that he loved her and she loved him back. For the first time in her life, she felt full, so she decided to stay with the deer. Freely roaming with the deer, Apijigo learned to communicate with his people until finally her family found her and killed her beloved deer. She returned to her village, sad but satisfied, and became known as Blue Prairie Woman.

While Cisneros’ stories focus on one main character, Erdrich’s novel has a complete cast of characters who experience loss and survival. The main characters include three generations of Blue Prairie Woman’s descendents: Klaus, Sweetheart Calico (Beidler, 42), identical twins Zosie and Mary, Zosie’s twin daughters Rozin and Aurora, and Rozin’s twin daughters, Cally and Deanna.  Each of these characters, with the exception of Aurora and Deanna, experience heart crushing losses; yet they continue to approach life whole-heartedly. In addition to the loss heartbreak brings, Erdrich’s characters also survive the deaths of their children, the degradation of alcoholism, and the despair of loneliness. These characters also suffer the dilution of their cultural identity as shown in the modern names of Cally and Deanna plus the transitions from freely wandering the prairie to living on a reservation to subsisting in urban life.

Erdrich does a magnificent job of intertwining the lives of all these people! Her writing style resembles the way an oral story takes on different directions as the speaker attempts to explain all the human interactions. She accomplishes this and maintains the Native American loss and survival theme throughout the narrative. In her own essay, Meldan Tanrisol comments, “In Erdrich's novels, women and especially mothers bear the enormous responsibility of family relationships that sustain both individual and community, despite the existing conflicts between them. They are powerful women who counteract destruction” (72). This is certainly true in The Antelope Wife.

In the same manner Cisneros and Erdrich write their own ethnic themes of dislocation/ambiguity and loss/survival, African American author Toni Morrison exquisitely portrays the African American experience and the hope found within their dreams in The Bluest Eye. This narrative introduces us to Pecola, a little Black girl who is shunned by everyone and believes all her troubles will disappear if she only had blue eyes. The story alternates being told through the eyes of Claudia, another little Black girl, and an omniscient narrator that provides background information as to why the despicable characters behave the way they do. In addition to Pecola’s dream of having blue eyes, Morrison depicts the lives of Blacks through the use of dialect, allusion, and visions of a better life. Morrison structures the story in contrast to the Utopian Dick and Jane stories children learn to read in elementary school, creating a catalyst for depicting Pecola’s miserable life.

As the story unfolds, Pecola suffers humiliation from everyone around her. If she is not being ridiculed for being ugly, she is simply ignored. Her classmates insult boys by saying, “ Bobby loves Pecola Breedlove” (46); her relationship with her mother is such that she calls her mother “Mrs. Breedlove;” and at the age of eleven, she becomes pregnant with her alcoholic father’s child. Despite all these injustices, Pecola believes the remedy for all this maltreatment is to possess pretty eyes – blue eyes. “Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she had prayed. Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time” (46). Thus, Pecola’s fantasized happiness remains a “dream.”

Although Cisneros’ stories are quite humorous and Erdrich’s novel instills a sense of hope, Morrison’s story of Pecola tears at the heart. She effectively stirs feelings of sympathy, anger, and compassion in the reader as the atrocities against Pecola are exposed. Mrs. Breedlove is not a loving mother, preferring instead the clean luxury of her employer’s home to the barren dinginess of her own storefront home. She enjoys bathing the little white girl “[. . .] in a porcelain tub with silvery taps running infinite quantities of hot, clear water” (127), and drying her with “fluffy towels” and combing her “yellow hair” (127). Consequently, the love, care and concern her own children deserve is directed toward a white child while Pecola is left to fend for herself, often cold, hungry, dirty, and starving for affection.

Morrison complicates the black and white issues of Pecola’s treatment by revealing the history behind the ones that abuse her, yet she maintains the African American dream theme. When she delves into Mrs. Breedlove’s history, Morrison switches from the formality of “Mrs. Breedlove” to the more personal “Pauline,” instantly drawing the reader into a more familiar relationship with the character. This twist in Morrison’s portrayal of Pauline encourages the reader’s sympathy for her situation and provides an understanding of her behavior. For example, once married to Cholly, Pauline left her home and family to “[. . .] come up north; [where there is] supposed to be more jobs and all” (117). She encountered a sea of unfriendly white people and the few black people she met she describes as, “Dicty-like. No better than whites for meanness. They could make you feel just as no-count, ‘cept I didn’t expect it from them” (117). After this passage, the reader easily identifies Pauline as a lonely, isolated, poverty stricken mother and wife to an abusive alcoholic husband.

To further define Pauline’s character, Morrison illustrates another African American experience, that of being regarded as animals, when Pauline describes her labor experience prior to Pecola’s birth:

When he [doctor] got to me he said now these here women you don’t have any trouble with. They deliver right away and with no pain. Just like horses. The young ones smiled a little. They looked at my stomach and between my legs. They never said nothing to me. Only one looked at me. Looked at my face, I mean. I looked right back at him. He dropped his eyes and turned red. He knowed, I reckon, that maybe I weren’t no horse foaling. (125)

Ultimately, Pauline comes to terms with her life by believing, “[. . .] I don’t care ‘bout it no more. My Maker will take care of me. I know He will. I know He will. Besides, it don’t make no difference about this old earth” (131). The dream of a better place and a better afterlife sustain her. Morrison’s similar technique with other characters in the book intensifies the African American “experience” and adds additional dimension to the narrative. 

            Morrison effectively uses the African American literary markers of uneducated African American dialect, references to Blacks as animals, migration to work in the north, and the dream of a better life to come. In addition, Morrison brings understanding, if not forgiveness, of the abusive characters in The Bluest Eye by revealing their own painful circumstances. She takes the reader into their memories and exposes the source of their motivation, forcing the reader to acknowledge that, although some people are capable of atrocious behavior, their actions derive from their own personal pain. Linda Dittmar describes the novel as “a brilliant orchestration of a complex multi-formed narrative” (qtd. In Malmgren, 251). Morrison’s ability to expose the psychological intricacies that propel human behavior, within the confines of one year out of a little Black girl’s life, is phenomenal. 

Complimenting the themes specific to Mexican, Native, and African American cultures represented in these narratives are the common minority themes of extended families and mysticism. For example, Lupe makes several references to her grandmother; Rozin’s family is so extended that she does not discover which of the twin sisters, Zosie or Mary, is actually her mother until her own child is an adult; and the only people who express concern for Pecola are three prostitutes and two of her classmates.  Mysticism is found in “Woman Hollering Creek” with the existence of La Llorna and in “Bien Pretty” with Lupe’s obsession with crystals, gongs, and chakras.  In The Antelope Wife, each of the novel’s four sections is preceded with an introduction that perpetuates the mythical theme that the characters’ lives are being controlled by the beadwork created by twin sisters – a variation of one of the NA creation stories. The story begins, “Ever since the beginning these twins are sewing. [. . .] They sew with a single sinew thread, in, out, fast and furious, each trying to set one more bead into the pattern than her sister, each trying to upset the balance of the world” (1). Finally, mysticism in The Bluest Eye is represented by the character of a demented man believed to have supernatural powers and the people that seek his intervention.  Disillusioned by unanswered prayers, Pecola puts her faith in this man and begs him to give her blue eyes. Her feelings of lost faith and hope turn to insanity and allow her to cope with living the only way she can – with blue eyes. 

Cisneros, Erdrich, and Morrison’s ability to share the uniqueness of their own cultures through an array of universal emotions is inspiring and encouraging.  While demonstrating characteristics that are simply human – not Mexican, Native, African, or dominant American – each author utilizes the universal themes of the quest for selfhood, human weakness, and the victimization of loved ones. Whether their quest for selfhood is defined by their self-determination as seen in Cleofilas’ move toward independence and Klaus’ abstinence from alcohol, or the fact that Lupe “[. . .] has no identity that isn’t purchased” (Thompson, 423), or Pecola’s delusion that she is something other than her true self, each character in these stories shares the human need to know and be themselves. Human weakness and the victimization of loved ones is illustrated through examples of alcoholism and domestic/sexual abuse: Cleofilas is physically abused by a drunken husband; Rozin’s daughter’s death is caused by her intoxicated husband’s behavior; and Pecola becomes pregnant by her own drunken father.

The unique styles of Cisneros, Erdrich, and Morrison collectively weave a braid of humanity. Their talents include depicting their specific ethnic themes as well as common minority themes and themes consistent with the human condition. In addition, their narratives refute strictly literary or cultural classifications, opting instead to represent both genres. Today, more than ever before, authors of varying ethnicities are challenged to share their cultures with the world as a way of battling ignorance and fear. Their works can influence the way we see each other’s hearts and the human characteristics we all share. Without the contributions of authors such as these, we might only be aware of the differences.  

Works Cited

Beidler, Peter G. and Gay Barton. A Reader’s Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich.University of Missouri Press. Columbia and London. 1999.

Cisneros, Sandra. “Woman Hollering Creek”. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Vintage Books. New York. 1991. 43-56.

---.  “Bien Pretty.” Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Vintage Books. New York. 1991. 137-165.

Erdrich, Louise. The Antelope Wife. Perennial New York 1998.

Malmgren, Carl. “Texts, Primers, and Voices in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Critique 41.3 (2000): 251-263.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Alfred A. Knopf. New York. 2000.

Tanrisol, Meldan. “Mother and child relationships in the novels of Louise Erdrich.” American Studies International 35.3 (1997): 67-80.
Thompson, Jeff. “What is called heaven: Identity in Sandra Cisnero's Woman Hollering Creek.”  Studies in Short Fiction 31.3(1994): 415-425.