Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories

I had such a wonderful time reading this collection of stories by Sandra Cisneros! The stories are so thoughtful and well-written. I am in amazement! I liked that I felt the stories were very relatable to me and really touched my heart and soul. I felt inspired while reading. I feel close to her since she is Mexican American also. I read the stories at night before bedtime. I went ahead and bought her book Caramelo next which I am currently reading. It will be my second time reading it, as I read it once over a decade ago in my twenties.

It was in 7th grade when I was first introduced to the House on Mango Street. Thanks to my teacher Ms. Henning, I have become an avid reader of Ms. Cisneros and other great writers such as Elena Poniatowska (one of Sandra's favorites), Julia Álvarez, and Gabriel García Márquez. When I was a freshman in high school, Caramelo had been released and I read it in a matter of three days. The only book left to read of Cisneros was Woman Hollering Creek. This year, things changed. I spent my summer at Harvard University where I took two courses. Mexican Literature and Fiction Writing. While at Harvard, one of my favorite things to do was to walk into the Harvard Book Store, go downstairs to the USED book section and search through the bookshelves. Eventually, that day I purchased the House of Spirits by Isabel Allende (because no one can believe that I haven't read it), Go Tell it to the Mountain by James Baldwin, Sula by Toni Morrison, and last but not least, Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros. Since the East Coast consists of very small states, I visited a couple of schools including Boston U., Tufts, Brown, Amherst, Dartmouth, NYU, and Columbia. My trip to Columbia had to be the most fun of all. Me, and two friends, one from L.A. and the other from Chicago all took books for the bus trip. I remember my friend from L.A. was reading Beloved by Toni Morrison, the other was reading a book that was assigned by her Psychology professor (BORING), and I was reading Woman Hollering Creek. By the time we got to New York City I was finished with the book. I liked it so much that when I went back to Harvard I requested my favorite story "Mericans" to be read in class and afterwards we had a discussion. Because of Sandra, I am now a writer and I admire her for getting so far. If you have read The House on Mango Street, you have an idea of the type of neighborhood Sandra lived in. Well that's the exact same neighborhood in which I have been living all my life. Most of the adolescents living in this neighborhood are seen as students who are incapable of having a good future, but Sandra has proved that wrong. Now, she is internationally well known and has been my motivation throughout the past years. Earlier this year, I had to opportunity to meet her in person, and said that she was working on a book right now. I have no other option than to wait.

There is a certain beauty in Sandra Cisneros's writing that helps her to stand out from the crowd. It is beautiful and absolutely heart wrenching all at the same time. She paints pictures of an emotional range rarely found in modern literature. Focusing in on Latina women, this collection of short stories ranges in plot from a witch woman in her home country to a desperately in love young woman who can't seem to find her way out of a relationship that is obviously not good for her to a collection of prayers from a community of people. This reads quickly, but is definitely one of those books that needs time to digest after you get through a story. Surface meanings do not come easily here, let alone those buried deep in the typeface. The writing is a tad depressing, but that fits with the overarching theme of women in poverty, struggling to get by, and yet seeing a sad beauty surrounding their worlds that nobody else seems to notice. Thankfully, there are a few sections where Cisneros drives the fits of triumphant womanhood home to save us from being swallowed whole by misery. All in all a great read and very accessible to all genders and races.

This writer is a phenomenal artist and story teller. Good quality! Great cover! Came so quickly, and if you like this one or don't like it, Just pick up one of her other novels or shorts, they are some of the most clever writing style still embroidered with all of the raw emotion that creates historical classics.

Amazing collection of stories from highly respected and influential Chicana author Sandra Cisneros. Full of emotion that spans across various narratives, it paints an overview of a life of personal struggle in overcoming dashed dreams, unexpected high points, and most of all myriad forms of love and personal mythologies which stem from border living and dual cultural experience.

Great read from one of my favorite authors. This is a great light read when you have limited time.

I wanted to write this review on the way Sandra Cisneros uses English and Spanish throughout her writing. I believe it was a clever way to show her Mexican heritage and include words in the story that might mean certain things to her or the characters that can't quite be translated into English, but I believe that even though it is a clever way to show these two sides of her, sometimes it's not just a couple words its entire sentences, and it can cause problems with the readers not understanding what it might mean and struggle to put two and two together. Of course, there are online sources that they can use if they need to but I think maybe just including a rough translation would be a big help. Another problem I found is how she jumps back and forth, from past to present with no clear way of showing that, just suddenly being there in that moment. I had a lot of trouble reading this book because of that, and other things but that was a big part of my struggle reading this book. Now her way of writing, in my opinion it is very difficult to grasp in its entirety and to understand how she explains things and dances around certain topics and subjects, it almost seems like she's making it more difficult for us to read and comprehend. Now moving on from her writing style, her literary techniques are pretty interesting like I was saying before how she implements a little bit of Spanish and uses a lot of syntax to put certain words or phrases together, it is pretty cool to see something like that. What truly got me a little amazed was her use of metaphors throughout all the stories like this one for example, “To look at [him] as [he] sleeps, the color of [his] skin. How in the half-light of the moon [he] casts [his] own light, as if [he was] all made of amber, Miliano. As if [he was] a little lantern, and everything in the house is golden too”(88). There are many more examples of metaphors like that one, the way she puts them together is truly mind-breaking and cool, how she comes up with them, I have no idea but they do require you to take a second and think about what she just said, that's happened to me many times going through this book. I believe this book is very interesting and a little difficult for me to read personally but I do have Dyslexia so many things are hard to read for me. I do think this book was interesting and makes you think about a lot of things, but I do recommend reading it if you don't mind some Spanish, and a lot of interesting metaphors.

This is writing so good, story-telling so musical that it re-awakens an appreciation of language itself. Forget all the categories-feminist, Chicana, etc. This is the stuff of humanity: salty, melancholy, funny, ironic. Sheer genius on the page. "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see. So long lives this. And this gives life to thee."