This study will compare the treatment of women in Sandra Cisneros' collection of stories, Woman Hollering Creek, Arturo Islas' novel The Rain God, and Cherrie Moraga's non-fiction work Loving in the War Years. The study will consider the sexuality of women, their relationships, and their ability to endure in the face of current obstacles and physical, moral and psychological traumas. The thesis of the paper will be that the three books, taken together, form a full portrait of Mexican and Mexican-American women. They should not be seen as being in conflict with one another, but rather as working together to give that full portrait of at least some of the alternative positions taken by women in that culture.
On the one hand, we find an extreme Chicana-lesbian-feminist viewpoint as expressed by Moraga. In the middle, we have Cisneros' treatment of woman as modern heterosexual who is trying to find the balance between the old and the new with respect to sexuality, relationships with men, and the Mexican-American culture. And finally, we have the traditional view of women as expressed by Islas, the only male author of the three. In general, for example, with respect to sexuality, it is fair to say that the lesbian Moraga rejects sex with men in favor of sex with women, not because she hates men but because she loves women. The women in Cisneros are heterosexual, but they express various complaints about heterosexuality. And the women in Islas are fully accepting of not only their heterosexuality, but also the roles that men and women traditionally play in the Latin American culture in that regard.
Of course, these divisions are not as simple and clear as the analyst might want them to be. For example, in reading the work of the radical Chicana lesbian Moraga, the reader is immediately struck by a number of paradoxes and contradictions. Those conflicts are at the heart of the traumas which have shaped and defined her. We read first ...