Woman hollering creek analysis, Study Guides, Projects, Research of English Language

Download Woman hollering creek analysis and more Study Guides, Projects, Research English Language in PDF only on Docsity! 1 Lesson Plans for Teaching Four Stories from Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991): “Eleven,” “Barbie-Q,” “Little Miracles, Kept Promises,” and “Woman Hollering Creek” Peter Schmidt Swarthmore College Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991) is assigned frequently in high school and undergraduate courses in English and American literature, Latinx literature, and other classes. This essay presents teaching strategies for Cisneros’ short fiction by focusing on two stories that explore childhood—“Eleven” and “Barbie- Q”—and two that treat difficult passages into adulthood, “Woman Hollering Creek” and “Little Miracles, Kept Promises.” Learning Outcomes These lesson plans will provide teachers with resources to help high school or college/university students of all ethnicities appreciate these stories’ richness and wisdom regarding coming-of-age experiences and the cultural history of both the U.S. and Mexico. Students will be taught to appreciate and evaluate the stories as literature, including Cisneros’ varied vocabulary, powerful sentences, daring metaphors, allusions, and story structure. All four stories also have rich and ambiguous endings that inspire students to debate how best to interpret them; the stories don’t provide simplistic or feel- good resolutions. Students will learn how to identify and research key references, such as to La Llorona, La Malinche, Virgen de Guadalupe, or Tonantzín; they will then learn how to apply that information back to the story itself, creating a deeper reading of its drama. Students will explore how commodities (like Barbie dolls) and religious icons affect girls’ and women’s identities. “Barbie-Q,” for instance, traces two protagonists influenced by stereotypical, commercialized ideals of femininity and whiteness. But is that story really just about brainwashing? Students will be taught to use these tales to reflect on how popular commercial and religious cultures enforce negative stereotypes (especially regarding race, class, and Mexicana/Chicana identity), yet may also be used to question and undo those very same cultural scripts. Cisneros’ tales highlight experiencing trauma and then narrate how such pain may be at least partially healed within a community of others. Discussing these stories guided by these lesson plans should help students not only appreciate Cisneros’ story-telling prowess, but also reflect on their own difficulties and gain strength. Así, estos cuentos son milagritos. 2 (Optional) Introductory Discussion Points The following two observations, the first by Cisneros herself, can help open consideration of Cisneros creative goals. In A House of My Own: Stories from My Life, Cisneros expresses her admiration for the Catalán writer Marcè Rodoreda: “It is this precision at naming the unnameable that attracts me to Rodoreda, this woman, this writer, hardly little, adept at listening to those who do not speak, who are filled with great emotions, albeit mute to name them.” (123) Consider also sharing this point by the poet and critic Harryette Mullen: Woman Hollering Creek contains “stories of a variety of women trying various means of escape, through resistance to traditional female socialization, through sexual and economic independence, self-fashioning, and feminist activism, as well as through fantasy, prayer, magic, and art.” (8) Discuss with students how they interpret either or both of these quotations. Why does Cisneros so value the “unnameable” or what’s been made “mute”? How would they put Mullen’s praise in their own words? In what ways do these quotations connect with your students’ own thoughts and emotions when reading Cisneros? Lesson Plan for Teaching “Eleven” (Woman Hollering Creek, pp. 6-9) Since the story’s short and dramatic, have 2-3 students read aloud portions of the story. Discussion questions Each will open up discussion in different ways: The 11-year-old girl never names herself, though some of her classmates are named. Give reasons for and against why an author would not name her main character. Also, notice that the girl speaks her thoughts to “you”—which means like we feel (or should feel) as if she’s speaking directly to us. How is this fact important for interpreting the story? Why is the girl so upset about a sweater? Look at how Cisneros’ writing vividly uses the present tense to place us in the girl’s imagination. One example: discuss the paragraph in the middle of p. 8 beginning with the sentence “But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes” and ending “Not mine, not mine, not mine.” What else occurs in the classroom—between the teacher and the girl, and the girl vs. her classmates—that upset her? What does Mrs. Price say to the girl, and why do you think the teacher behaves as she does? (Is the teacher certain that the red sweater is the girl’s?) How do you feel about how the teacher treats the girl? Why does it help or hurt the girl to imagine that she’s not only 11, she’s also 10, 9, 8, etc.? Look in particular at the opening statement the girl makes about the paradox of age (pp. 6-7). 5 arguably doesn’t offer us a definitive conclusion about whether the girls’ behavior is good or bad, delusional or praiseworthy. It just presents it in their voice, brimming with excitement and ecstatic present action (“there! And there! and there!”). • Is the story’s refusal to judge the girls’ interaction with a product of the Mattel Corporation a strength or weakness? Optional Online Resources and Student Research Projects for “Barbie-Q,” including background on the Maxwell Street market in Chicago and debates about mass market popular culture and how consumers interact with it: See Peter Schmidt’s academia.edu website and check for the Cisneros Research Projects document in the Teaching Documents section: https://swarthmore.academia.edu/PeterSchmidt Lesson Plan for Teaching “Little Miracles, Kept Promises” (Woman Hollering Creek, pp. 116-24) Cisneros’ story is composed of many writings by others that accompanied small charms left to honor the Virgin Mary (or other saints or sacred beings) for healing miracles, in the manner of ex-votos. Milagritos, or little miracles, often have the form of the organ or body part healed; they are “miniature charms depicting parts of the body such as the heart, hands, and legs. Placed at a shrine that is considered to have miraculous power, they are attached to the clothing of the saint’s statue responsible for the miracle” (Pineda 368). An accompanying note, if one is left, is a prayer for help, or honors the ways in which the Virgin miraculously interceded in someone’s life to make it better. Collectively, these accounts tell the story of a community. DISCUSSION TOPICS Topic One: On Milagritos Since the story begins the way it does, consider the ways in which Cisneros’ story is a portrait not just of individual people and their notes, but also of a community under stress. Look at the following particular milagrito notes (and you may nominate a few others to discuss too): Adelfia’s (117), Barbara’s (117-18), Arnulfo’s (120), and Teresa’s (121-22). • What personalities do these figures display, as shown by their writing voice, including both how they describe their crisis and how they give thanks? • What is the importance of the story’s double title, “Little Miracles, Kept Promises”? • In acknowledging the Virgin, are the characters are placing all agency and power outside of themselves, in Her? Or do you think Her succor also ignites a kind of power in the people themselves? Point to the wording in the stories to give evidence in support of your view. What does posing this question tell us about the power and mystery of religious belief, in your opinion? Encourage students 6 either in small groups or in reflection papers to indicate passages to support their answers to these questions, and to discuss the power and mystery of religious and cultural beliefs in contemporary society. • Some of the milagrito stories reveal relatively happy resolutions. Other endings are left ambiguous; the reader doesn’t know if the prayer was answered. Why do you think Cisneros included such a mix? Collectively, these stories also tell us the story of a community, la gente or mi pueblo in Spanish. What general themes emerge about the challenges this community confronts and how they are met? Topic Two: Portrait of the Artist as a Chicana Feminist: The Emergence of Chayo At the conclusion to “Little Miracles,” the story’s format changes. Instead of just a brief note from her (given at the story’s conclusion), we get an extended transcription of the thoughts and experiences of a particular person, Rosario “Chayo” De Leon of Austin, Texas. The concluding sequence (pp. 124-29) acts as a portrait of the artist as a young woman experiencing a transformation in how she thinks about herself and her destiny. She bears bears some resemblances to both the painter Frida Kahlo and Sandra Cisneros. This final section of the story (pp. 124-29) is presented as a long “note” or prayer to La Virgen de Guadalupe, accompanied by a long “braid” of Chayo’s hair that she has cut off and pinned to La Virgen’s statue, giving thanks for receiving the strength to begin a new life as an artist (124). Rivera interprets the gift of her cut braid to La Virgen as signifying “rebirth” (48), stressing this quotation from Chayo: “my head as light as if I’d raised it from water” (Woman Hollering Creek 125). Key to Chayo’s emergence as an artist is her discovery of a connection between La Virgen de Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, and the Aztec or Nahua earth goddess Tonantzín, whom Chayo comes to realize is La Virgen’s antecedent. Tonantzín’s temple was built on Tepeyac hill in Tenochtitlán but was razed by the Spanish soon after the conquest of the city (1519-21). After the peasant Juan Diego had repeated visions of the Virgin Mary on or near the same site in December 1531, the first of several basilicas honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe was constructed. The current basilica on Tepeyac hill in Mexico City is one of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world. La Virgen de Guadalupe is associated with the Virgin Mary, but she also became a saint in her own right—in fact, she was the first dark-skinned Mexican saint recognized by the Catholic church. She is honored throughout Latin America, particularly in Mexico, and by Latinos in the U.S. Depictions of her normally emphasize her dark brown skin (Gonzáles-Berry). Chayo explores the inspiration given to her by three powerful women: the Virgin Mary, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and Tonantzín. For Chayo they become a kind of women- centric Trinity: three separate but united forces for spiritual healing. Chayo’s synthesis linking these three powerful women changes her mind about the meaning of La Virgin de 7 Guadalupe story. Chayo’s new perspective towards these miraculous women gives her confidence in her own destiny to be an independent artist. To explore these themes, have students seek to answer the following questions: • At first Chayo associates La Virgen with subservience and suffering, refusing to allow images of her where she lives. (“For a long time I wouldn’t let you in my house” [127]). Since La Virgen de Guadalupe is the patron saint of Mexico and of Chicanos as well, with images of her everywhere, including in homes, Chayo’s initial refusal to honor her is not a trivial or minor act on Chayo’s part. How should we understand Chayo’s act? • How is Chayo affected by the constant comments she hears from family and friends urging her to abandon her dreams to be a painter and to be a more conventional, less “selfish” woman? See especially pp. 125-26. Note that Chayo “hears” these voices criticizing her even when she’s alone. • What qualities does Chayo admire in Tonantzín? How does discovering a possible link between Tonantzín and La Virgen change Chayo’s understanding of the meaning of La Virgen for her? See in particular pp. 127-28. Optional Online Resources and Research Projects on “Little Miracles, Kept Promises,” covering milagritos, Tonantzín, the story’s Frida Kahlo allusion, and other topics: See Peter Schmidt’s Academia.edu webpage and check for the Cisneros Research Projects document in the Teaching Documents section: https://swarthmore.academia.edu/PeterSchmidt Lesson Plan for Teaching “Woman Hollering Creek” (Woman Hollering Creek, pp. 43-56). This is a story where social and geographical spaces are marked by thresholds or border crossings where expectations are dashed. Yet out of those same spaces may emerge new possibilities. Cisneros’ story explores both outcomes. DISCUSSION TOPICS Spaces in the story marked by thresholds or border crossings Find some references to thresholds, borders, arroyos, even edges. Who are the dominant figures in these spaces and boundaries, and how does Cleófilas relate to them? Have students make some lists and discuss them. Are all the “gods” of these spaces or borderlines all male? Great expectations become dashed What are some examples of disillusionment in the story? What causes the changes that Cleófilas experiences?