LITR 5731 Seminar in American Multicultural Literature
Minority Literature


Lecture Notes

begin Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek

 

Style: what doing with viewpoint? Border of 1st person & 3p limited

Compare Love Medicine: story collection or novel?

terms / names: retablo, La Malinche, Frida Kahlo

 

 

 

Introduce Whitman as "gay poet"

Whitman lived 1819-92

word "homosexual" wasn't coined until 1892, year of Whitman's death

coincidence!

 

Complexities of gay identity . . . more or less permanent, perennial fact of human existence, but doesn't rise from any one source, but takes many forms or expressions

 

America's greatest poet as a gay poet?

Whitman as poet who gives voice to voiceless

multiple-identitied model?

 

Next week:

Civil War poems of Whitman as another possible expression

 

Assignment: comments re contemporary style

 

Gender / family-self: modern x traditional

 

Ambivalence or “range” of Mex Am

Ethnicity / race

Sex / gender

class

 

Help me describe: west as Tex-Mex: Ultima saloon & church

 

Cisneros’s style; compare Anaya

 

Syncretism, or what?

 

Tex Mex language mix

Metaphor of the border

 

Gender / family-self: modern x traditional

18-19 girl > German

55 the pickup was hers

56 pain or rage x hoot

69 toothbrush cf. flag at North Pole

127 x-choose being female, painter

127 love something instead of someone

127 no woman wants to live alone

128 What they teach you at the University?

128 Acting like a bolilla, a white girl

128 Mary the Mild > our mother Tonantzin

128 suffer > special power

  

Ambivalence or “range” of Mex Am

15 Maxwell Street = Chicago

17 PRI elections

20 speak English? . . . We’re Mericans

23 this borrowed country

27 Chaq < Mayan kings

28 sent to Mexico, if they had never left Mexico, devil things

32 blamed Uncle Lalo > this country

33 sent my mother to the US

46 The Rich Also Cry

50 Mex / USA: houses farther apart; x-walk [cf. p. 45 on women’s interaction]

51 Llorona?

52 US w/o TV, telenovela

52 not of the same class

55 a regular soap opera sometimes

55 a Spanish pocked with English

62 love slave, Texas senator, went AWOL > bullfighter in MX, pro wrestler, Kng Kong Cardenas

68 [Mother] born in US, father born there

69 [list of Hispanic nations]

69 Mexican family x el otro lado

69 marrying up, even if white girl poor [race & class]

69 Mex girl can’t speak Spanish

70 sat on back of bus in Little Rock

70 x-economic refugee, immigrant

71 amphibious, x-any class: money, education

110 future and past as single thread

112 ancient land titles, grants, in Nahuatl

131 Lady at the K-Mart [replaces elder in giving advice]

 

 

 

Help me describe: west as Tex-Mex

Handout on Seguin

45 Seguin TX

Ultima 92 saloon opposite church

62 love slave, Texas senator, went AWOL > bullfighter in MX, pro wrestler, Kng Kong Cardenas

114 El Divorcio Lounge

120 what I send home – wife, kid, in-laws depend

121 el Skyler

130 Big Red

140 Southwest funk

155 All my Ex’s Live in Texas

 

 

Cisneros’s style

Review exploration of Ultima; contrast humor, “friendly”

Compare Alexie: shifts viewpoint; unsettled perspective; distancing > irony x profundity, seriousness

Los Acknowledgements

5 could be sisters, right?

6 like my little wooden dolls [diminutive, + continued image, symbol]

9 have to close your eyes to see it [paradox]

30 initiated

31 pushcart?

32 moon of my cycle

33 Caves of the Hidden Girl [false mythicism or repressed voice starting to find itself?]

 

“My Tocaya”

36 humor

37 Mex with Brit accent

37 [texture of popular culture]

38 Sex Rap Crap = Youth Exchange

38 hormones + sister Virginella

44 milkshake > pimple on backside

48 [quick insight]

62 love slave, Texas senator, went AWOL > bullfighter in MX, pro wrestler, Kng Kong Cardenas [campiness]

 

 

“Never Marry a Mexican” starts p. 68

[ultimately falls apart—viewpoint too diffuse or psychotic—not sure one cares]

88 when you are gone I re-create you from memory . . . I miss you even as you lie next to me

95 [false gravity?]

117 pain in the nalgas [use of Spanish for euphemism]

123 [language transition]

130 [oral proverb]

 

“Tin Tan Tan”

135-6 pastiche?—literary, artistic, or musical work that imitates the style of previous work

parody?—2. a feeble or ridiculous imitation

 

 

Syncretism

29 people of the sun

29 stars, ancient stones . . . pedestals

30 bring back ancient ways

119 Seven African Powers . . . Bible says?

122 Black Christ

139-40 [MX artifacts, curios]

140 Southwest funk

141 I Ching

141 criminal lawyer + Aztec dance instructor, Berkeley

157 La yin y el yang

158-9 church-sanctioned candles x folk powers

 

 

Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. NY: Vintage, 1991.

Los Acknowledgements

Tex-Mex text inspected by Juanita “La Tejanita” Luna-Lawhn

Virgen de Guadalupe Tonantzin

I. My Lucy Friend who smells like Corn

3 Her whole family like that

5 could be sisters, right?

 

“Eleven”

6 [childlike wonder at small thoughts]

6 like my little wooden dolls

9 tiny-tiny [precious]

9 have to close your eyes to see it

 

Salvador Late or Early”

10 homes the color of bad weather

10 body with geography of scars

11 like a memory of kites

 

“Mexican Movies”

12 red red (cf. 9 tiny tiny)

13 like little houses

13 Mama puts her sweater (> sentiment)

 

“Barbie-Q”

15 Maxwell Street = Chicago

 

“Mericans”

[set in Mexico City]

17 Virgen de Guadalupe

17 PRI elections

18 Auntie Light-Skin

18 Virgen

18 B-52 Bomber x German

18 Girl = German

Girl = Tonto

19 relatives

19 barbaric country (USA)

19 movies / church cf. Pedro Infante

20 ladies dressed in pants

20 speak English? . . . We’re Mericans

 

“Tepeyac”

21 ink of Japanese blue / La Virgen

21 Cinco de Mayo

22 Juan Diego

23 that borrowed country

23 [modernization]

23 one who will remember

 

II. One Holy Night

27 Chaq < Mayan kings

28 sent to Mexico, if they had never left Mexico, devil things

29 strange language

29 past and future are the same to his people [Indian time]

29 people of the sun

29 stars, ancient stones . . . pedestals [romanticization of Indian past; cf Bubbas and American Indians]

30 bring back ancient ways

30 initiated

31 pushcart?

32 moon of my cycle

32 blamed Uncle Lalo > this country

33 sent my mother to the US

34 Caves of the Hidden Girl

35 love like harmonica

 

“My Tocaya”

36 humor

37 Mex with Brit accent

37 fist fights [tight families]

37 [texture of popular culture]

38 Sex Rap Crap = Youth Exchange

38 hormones + sister Virginella

40 drain ditch, body > rose from dead 3 days later

40 San Antonio

 

 

III. There was a Man, There was a Woman

“Woman Hollering Creek”

43 look south, dream of returning

43 border, other side, father’s permission

43 x- man, woman

> parent, child

44 milkshake > pimple on backside

44 telenovela

44 passion . . . always loving, no matter what

45 to suffer for love is good

45 Seguin TX

46 The Rich Also Cry

46 La Gritona < de los indios, townspeople shrugged [cf. La Llorona]

46 in this country . . .

48 [quick insight]

50 Mex / USA: houses father apart; x-walk [cf. p. 45 on women’s interaction]

51 Llorona?

52 US w/o TV, telenovela

52 not of the same class

55 a regular soap opera sometimes

55 a Spanish pocked with English

55 the pickup was hers

56 pain or rage x hoot

 

“Marlboro Man”

57 gay?

58 same Marlboro man?

58 hill country

59 cf. Lassies, Shamu, Ralph

 

“La Fabulosa: A Texas Operetta”

62 love slave, Texas senator, went AWOL > bullfighter in MX, pro wrestler, Kng Kong Cardenas

 

“Remember the Alamo

[trouble reading—inquire?]

66 no in-between except for the show

 

“Never Marry a Mexican”

[ultimately falls apart—viewpoint too diffuse or psychotic—not sure one cares]

68 [Mother] born in US, father born there

69 toothbrush cf. flag at North Pole

69 [list of Hispanic nations]

69 Mexican family x el otro lado

69 marrying up, even if white girl poor [race & class]

69 Mex girl can’t speak Spanish

70 sat on back of bus in Little Rock

70 x-economic refugee, immigrant

71 amphibious, x-any class: money, education

72 be like Frida or Tina

72 barrio cute in daytime, cf. Sesame Street

72 Our Lady of Guadalupe church

72 cf. wild, wild West

73 water under the damn?

74 Malinella, Malinche + Cortez

76 brown woman = sister; white woman not sister

 

“Bread”

84 charming x poverty

 

“Eyes of Zapata”

87 land titles

88 owl wings

88 Malenita

88 when you are gone I re-create you from memory . . . I miss you even as you lie next to me

92 a chachalaca flew into the house and batted against the ceiling

95 [false gravity?]

97 hummingbird + Virgencita

100 you’ve left many mothers crying

101 eyes with teeth

101 caciques after land, law, women

105 the power to see with more than our eyes

106 if I am a witch

106 you spoke in mexicano

110 belong to the land

110 future and past as single thread

112 Zapata name > PRI campaign

112 ancient land titles, grants, in Nahuatl

 

“Anguiano Religious Articles”

114 El Divorcio Lounge

114 Santo Nino de Atocha

114 cheaper on the other side – Nuevo Laredo

115 furry eyelashes

“Little Miracles, Kept Promises”

116 retablo

117 San Martin de Porres

117 Zulema finish school x helping at home

117 pain in the nalgas [use of Spanish for euphemism]

117 man man . . . cooking, cleaning . . . adult [cf. Carolina]

119 Seven African Powers . . . Bible says?

120 [employer won’t pay—classical immigrant problem?]

120 what I send home – wife, kid, in-laws depend

121 el Skyler

121 milagrito

122 trip to San Antonio

122 Black Christ

123 [language transition]

124 British Restoration Literature

124 [transition to extended story]

124 a woman with one foot in this world and one foot in that

126 a painter!

127 x-choose being female, painter

127 love something instead of someone

127 no woman wants to live alone

127 putting up with pain in name of God

127 Virgen > bare-breasted, snakes, bulls, x-self-sacrifice

127 Malinchiste. Hocicora.

128 What they teach you at the University?

128 Acting like a bolilla, a white girl

128 Mary the Mild > our mother Tonantzin

128 suffer > special power

 

“Los Boxers”

130 Big Red

130 [oral proverb]

131 Lady at the K-Mart [replaces elder in giving advice]

 

“There Was . . . “

 

 

“Tin Tan Tan”

135-6 pastiche?—literary, artistic, or musical work that imitates the style of previous work

parody?—2. a feeble or ridiculous imitation

 

 

“Bien Pretty”

137 chaparritos

138 Flavio > Rogelio

138 [exterminator ad]

139 I. I. Coronado, famous TX poet, PhD from Sorbonne

139-40 [MX artifacts, curios]

140 Southwest funk

141 I Ching

141 criminal lawyer + Aztec dance instructor, Berkeley

141 Meskins

142 TX: chain saws, gun racks, pickups, Confederate flags

142 tejanote = Texcessive

142 “la otra”

142 Eddie: human rights in Guatemala . . . x-rights of Blacks in Oakland, x-women of color

143 perfect Prince Popo

144 classic > kitsch calendar art

144 Torres Taco Haven

145 poet + bug assassin

148 storytelling competitions

149 Oralia

149 thinking about time

150 [metaphysical melting pot—buffet-style religion]

151 product of American imperialism

151 x-serape & sombrero > Mexican

152 made by a God who loved you, . . . from red clay [origin story]

153 made love in Spanish

153 Ouch! > !Ay!

153 Words that smelled like your house [cf. Rodriguez]

153 English starched, crisp, crunch, resilient, stiff

154 letters of Georgia O’Keeffe

155 All my Ex’s Live in Texas

157 La yin y el yang

158-9 church-sanctioned candles x folk powers

159 Law Stay Away

159 herbs look like animal

161 women who make things happen

162 telenovela star weeps like a Magdalene

163 me and me

165 x-future, past > today