1. Thesis Statement:
Sandra Cisneros and Maxine Hong Kingston explore immigrant dynamics and the right of women to possess their own bodies in their stories Woman Hollering Creek and The No Name Woman by using a story common to both cultures; the woman who drowns herself and her child then come back to drown others. This ending can serve as a warning not to get pulled under, but to keep struggling against adversity.
2. Argument:
Her No Name Woman is her father’s sister who killed herself and her newborn baby while the family lived in China. Her mother relates the story briefly when Maxine comes of age as a warning to keep her chastity. Since her mother refused to provide any information except that of her aunt’s former existence and circumstances of death she freely to imagines a myriad of circumstances. .She imagines the lonely spirit wanders in the after life and begins to offer the tradition gifts to a departed ancestor.. La Liorona is the weeping woman spirit said to haunt A Woman Hollering Creek. like Maxine’s aunt, she killed herself and her child. . Cisneros’s protagonist is under more difficult circumstances than Maxine Hong Kingston. Suffering from isolation and an abusive husband, Cleofilas in Woman Hollering Creek. ends up sitting on the bank of the Woman Hollering Creek musing about the story Although the place is real, the details of the story were long lost in the retelling and many different versions exist this allows her the opportunity to think of the many way a woman is driven to despair and how she can escape .
Immigrant women face the double burden of the culture from their homeland and the new culture in which they find themselves. Sandra Cisneros and Maxine Hong Kingston both use women and child murder-suicides to as an opportunity for young women to explore their thoughts on this through the eyes of women driven to despair. Kingston’s American reality is gentler than that of Cleofilias and she imagines what life in China was like for her Aunt. Cisneros created a more difficult reality of isolation and abuse for her heroine. Cleofilas always believed that "she would strike back if a man, any man, were to strike her." . However, in reality she needed the help of others to break free. Happily she finds it.
3. Conclusion
Every culture has its stories of women who choose death for themselves and their children. These make their way into the mythic fiber of the communities. La Liorona is the Spanish American spirit who waits by Woman Hollering Creek in Texas to drag down other women and children . There myths serve as an opportunity to explore how a woman could go wrong, and serve also as a warning not is to stray from the socially acceptable path lest you run into the dead woman who waits to pull down others.
Works Cited
Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. 1991.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. "No Name Woman." The Woman Warrior. 1976.
