The Chicana Borderland Position-on Woman Hollering Creek And Other Stories And Caramelo

Sandra Cisneros is a famous Mexican American writer in the contemporary American literary world.She is famous for her first novel The House on Mango Street.Her following books Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories and Caramelo are also highly concerned and welcomed by the public.From the perspective of females' narration,protagonists in Cisneros' s works are the Chicana of different age groups,stories of who are about their living conditions and personal growths among American society.Oppressed by both the White superiority and patriarchy,the Chicana are in the borderland position,at home and in the society.Cisneros depicts their experiences in her books to help them express their inner voice and resist to the oppression imposed on them.Her works have contributed to Mexican literature being focused and valued by the mainstream society in America,and have set up a cultural bridge for communication between Mexicans and Americans.Stories in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories and Caramelo happen in the background of the U.S-Mexican border,so this thesis is based on border theories.Protagonists' sufferings are analyzed from the influence of the physical border and border-crossing.After crossing the physical border,characters in the stories are drowned in helpless and drifting plights in America.They are ranged in the bottom rung of the society.The unquenchable racial discrimination and gender prejudice plus the unbridgeable class gap compel the characters to the borderland position.Having suffered from various pain and desperation,most protagonists in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories are inclined to resist the borderland position from some aspects such as isolating themselves from the traditional gender relation,abandoning woman's chastity and remaining single.While in Caramelo,the story about Lala is in a process of her embracing borderland position.Similar to the multifunctional caramelo rebozo which is mixed with various crafts from several countries and has embraced all of her grandmother and her sadness and bitterness,Lala finds that she should also be inclusive to her families and their flaws and faults,her hybrid identity and her borderland position.From Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories to Caramelo,Cisneros' writing ideas has changed.In the former one,she emphasizes more on the Chicana's resistance against the borderland position,while in the later one she pays more attention to the Chicana's acceptance of it.Her works can heighten people who are now trapping in the same position and help them find the way out of the plight.