On Sandra Cisneros’s Marginal Writing

Sandra Cisneros,borm in Chicago in 1954,was inspired by the drifting life between the borders of Chicago and Mexico in her childhood.Also,the Mexican American identity made her works quite unique and marginalized.The three most representative writings are The House on Mange Street,Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories,Caramelo,which draw their materials from marginal culture.Cisneros vividly depicts the growth development and life stories of marginal people with multiple visual angles and poetic styles of writing.This thesis takes these three novels as research objects,and works on Cisneros5s marginal writing and her strategies in marginal writing and cultural reflection.This thesis analyses amply Cisneros’s presentation of margin in her writing and the marginalized writing strategies,thus presents a more detailed analysis of the marginality in Cisneros’s cultural identity besides her Chicana identity,and emphasizes the influences she has gained from the mainstream culture in America.At the same time,it makes a profound research of the conflict between minority culture and mainstream culture in contemporary society,thus presenting a better way of thinking about how to face these conflicts by an exhaustive analysis of Cisneros,s reflection to marginal culture,and finally makes progress in social and cultural harmony.This thesis consists of three parts:The introduction,three chapters in the body part,and the conclusion.The introduction makes a comprehensive introduction to Cisneros and her major works,literature review,the research method and the main structure of this thesis.The second part can be divided into three chapters.The first chapter argues about Cisneros’s writing on margin.This part develops from Cisneros’s presenting of margin,and lists details about margin by close reading in the text of these three novels.There are three sections in the first chapter.The first one is about author’s detailed descriptions about marginal people,such as female and ethnic groups.The second section is Cisneroses writing on marginal culture,concerning about the environnent and the habitude in margin.The second chapter discusses Cisneros,s marginalized writing strategy as an artistic experiment,which consists of three sections:The first section analyses the non-mainstream languages Cisneros uses in her writing.She writes in her own ethnic language,Mexican,as well as the self-created new words and notes.The second section talks about Cisneros,s unique writing style.Her language lingers between the borders of poetry and novel,embodying the characteristic of the poetic novel.The third section probes into Cisneros’s multiplicity of marginal narrative perspectives.The third chapter deals with Cisneros’s marginal writing as a cultural strategy,namely her purposes and attitude towards marginal writing.The first section tells the construction of Cisneros’s marginal cultural identity.In the double marginal identity dilemma as both the ethnic identity and the female identity,Cisneros obtains her identity appeal in this dilemma.So,she feels like a "The Other" and wants to break out the dilemma.Also,as one of the representative Chicana writers,she is influenced by the Chicana identity and The New Mestiza Consciousness and gains the new identity construction.The second section summarizes Cisneros,s cultural reflection to marginality.It mainly discusses Cisneros’s pursuit of correcting the marginal stereotype by presenting the real ethnic culture in order to eliminate people’s prejudice and misunderstanding,thereby illuminates better ways of facing cultural conflicts nowadays by absorbing the merits and abandoning the demerits.The conclusion summarizes the main points that mentioned in the preceding chapters,and the central idea with the research value of this thesis.Cisneros gains the cultural inheritance and introspection by marginal writing.With a double marginalized identity,she fights against marginality by constructing the positive self-space.It is important to respect marginal culture,and necessary to keep a balance between varieties of cultures.