American Dream and Mexicans in "Woman Hollering Creek"

Résumé du document

Ce document est un essai sur le rêve américain et les désillusions vécues par les immigrants mexicains à travers une étude de l'œuvre "Woman Hollering Creek" de Sandra Cisneros avec bibliographie complète.
Première partie : The USA, a land full of promises.
Deuxième partie : Isolation and exclusion.
Troisième partie : The Mexican culture, both an emotional support and an escape.

Extraits

[...] Having such high hopes can lead to a bigger fall and disappointment in due time. Moreover, telenovelas have a highly negative and toxic impact on Cleófilas's prospects regarding her married life: she seems disappointed when Juan Pedro "doesn't look like the men on the telenovelas" (p. 49) and the main issue is, that telenovelas present pain and sorrow as a normal part of love: "More subtly, though [ . ] the telenovelas' lesson that one must do "whatever one can . [...]

[...] Far away and lovely" (Cisneros 45) For Cleófilas, Texas represents everything she ever wanted: a good situation, a comfortable life, and idyllic circumstances. The first thing to tempt the girl in the U.S. is this idea of prosperity that she has already made in her head. Even the name of her new city seems "lovely" to her, compared to the names of the nearby Mexican cities like "Monclova" or "Coahuia", which she thinks as "ugly" (Cisneros 45). Living in the USA is a new start for her, a better place where she can finally live a prosperous life. [...]

[...] Hornung, Alfred, "The Un-American Dream", Amerikastudien/American Studies, Vol No Universitätsverlag WINTER Gmbh pp. 545-553 Silver, John, "The Myth of El Dorado", History Workshop, Latin American History, No Oxford University Press Oxford. pp. 1-15 Vanneman, Reeve and Weber Cannon, Lynn, "The American Dream", The American Perception of Class, Temple University Press pp. 257-278 Wyatt, Jean, "On Not Being La Malinche: Border Negotiations of Gender in Sandra Cisneros's "Never Marry a Mexican" and "Woman Hollering Creek"", Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Autumn, Vol No University of Tulsa pp. [...]

[...] Expect for the actual sound of the city, what Cleófilas hears is also nice sterling ring to it. The tinkle of money" (Cisneros 45). The girl craves for material goods and to possess things she never had in the house she shared with her brothers and her father, which is made clear with the repetition of the word "new" on page 45 ("new pickup", "new home", "new paint", "new furniture"). It almost seems like the sole purpose of Juan Pedro, Cleófilas's future husband, is to provide money; he is mostly mentioned to precise that he owns a new pickup and that he can afford the price of the layout of their house. [...]

[...] She sometimes has to be around Juan Pedro's friends, whom she despises. Among them is Maximiliano, who appears like the archetype of the macho, both coarse and violent. When he makes a rude joke, mimicking having sex with a woman while saying "What she needs is" (Cisneros all the men laugh, which revolts Cleófilas, even more because she knows what is said about the Maximiliano: he "was said to have killed his wife in an ice-house brawl when she came at him with a mop. [...]