Voice and Power from Liminality: Postcolonial Feminism in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories - Essais Journal
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Voice and Power from Liminality:
Postcolonial Feminism in Woman
Hollering Creek and Other Stories
Ren Walker
S andra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories,
published in 1991, is a moving collection of short stories that draw
on Cisneros’s experience as a Chicana frequently moving between
America and Mexico. The stories can be read in three segments,
detailing scenes from childhood, adolescence, and adulthood,
respectively. The stories consider themes such as multiculturalism,
abuse, and the roles of women in sexual, familial, and platonic
relationships. The two entries discussed here include “Woman
Hollering Creek,” the story for which the collection is named,
and “Never Marry a Mexican.” The identities of the characters,
and by extension Cisneros herself, are built not only on one
experience but on many different facets of themselves, including
their culture, gender, language, and more. This concept of multiple
identities in one, initially introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw as
intersectionality, is a vital piece of understanding these identities.
While she first applied the term to the experiences of Black
women in particular, stating that “the intersection of racism and
sexism factors into Black women’s lives in ways that cannot be
captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of
those experiences separately” (1244), intersectionality has many
applications outside of that specific framework (though the
Essais vol. 12 no. 1 | Spring 2022Voice and Power Walker
contributions of Black women to the field of feminism cannot
be understated). Thus, the intersectionality of the characters in
Woman Hollering Creek builds on itself to create a niche within
modern social movements. It is not the effects of colonialism and
racism or the effects of sexism alone that dictate their experiences,
but the two interacting with each other; in this case, not only do
Chicana women feel the effects of racism and sexism in American
culture, they also feel them in Mexican culture—they sit on a
physical and metaphorical border, which essentially places them
in a liminal state: a stage that exists between two states of being,
where someone is not what they were and not yet what they will
be. More often than not, there is ambiguity and confusion on
what might be the “proper” way to act.
Many scholars have applied both postcolonial and
feminist lenses to Woman Hollering Creek, but it is postcolonial
feminism specifically that yields the clearest understanding
of Cisneros’s cultural influence. What I seek to understand
through this lens are the ways in which power is stolen
from, and eventually reclaimed by, Chicana women in
heterosexual relationships. Cisneros places an emphasis on
language in her writing, using both Spanish and English
freely to create the unique voices of each narrator. These
voices are then manipulated by the intersection of race,
class, ethnicity, and gender. The roles they are expected to
fill as Mexicans, as Americans, as women—and all within
their socioeconomic classes—come together to create a
sort of cultural liminality: there is no one set of rules to
guide them. Society dictates that they must attempt to
satisfy every demand from each of these categories—an
incompletable task. This paper will argue that through their
intersectional identities, and from this liminal space, the
women of Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories find
ways in which they can reclaim the voices that have been
silenced from the dynamics that actively work to stifle them,
thus giving Chicanas of the world outside of literature the
opportunity to do the same.
44Spring 2022 Essais
Finding the Chicana Woman
Postcolonialism exists as a field of study that examines
indigenous and marginalized populations as they stand in a
world that has been largely colonized by European powers and
cultures. A notable writer in this field is Frantz Fanon, who is
known for his book Black Skin, White Masks. His theory states
that a colonized person will take on and reflect the culture of
the colonizer who has made attempts to erase their own culture,
even to the point where speaking the language of their colonizers
is a reflection of their assimilation. He writes,
Every colonized people—in other words, every people
in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created
by the death and burial of its local cultural originality—
finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing
nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country.
The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in
proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s
cultural standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his
blackness, his jungle. (9)
This perspective is especially relevant and enlightening when
applied to the Chicana culture in a reading of Woman Hollering
Creek, as Cisneros’s use of language is particularly important to
the stories that are told and the messages conveyed.
Of equal importance to postcolonial theory is feminist
theory. In short, this theory exists as a literary lens that seeks to
separate women from oppressive patriarchal structures, questions
traditional gender roles, and analyzes the way a body of literature
portrays its female characters. It has had many writers across
centuries, but the one that will prove most relevant to this paper
is Hélène Cixous. In her essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,”
she asserts that women must occupy their own bodies in a
way that is separate from the patriarchal tradition of women
serving men: “By writing her self, woman will return to the
body which has been more than confiscated from her” (880).
In many ways, women’s bodies are not their own. Women are
expected to conform to the societal norms of their gender in an
45Voice and Power Walker
often detrimental way through clothing, makeup, mannerisms,
and child-bearing expectations. Cixous offers that women can
reclaim their bodies, and thus their voices and their lives, through
finding a voice that is their own in writing. She says that writing
will “tear her away from the superegoized structure in which
she has always occupied the place reserved for the guilty . . .
tear her away by means of this research, this job of analysis and
illumination, this emancipation of the marvelous text of her self
that she must urgently learn to speak” (880). This assertion of
the female voice and the occupation of the female body can
be seen in several of the stories included in Woman Hollering
Creek, and is an integral part of this analysis.
After reviewing both lenses separately, a picture of the two
combined comes into form. In short, postcolonial feminism
seeks to recognize intersectionality. The field of study developed
from criticisms of traditional feminism, which has historically
only considered the oppressions and rights of middle class white
women. A postcolonial feminist, then, is one who will not only
consider the ways in which women and colonized people are
oppressed separately, but also acknowledge the ways that Western
colonialism affects women of color. The domination of Western
culture in all aspects—language, gender presentation, the formation
of individual and familial identities, etc.—creates a different
struggle for women who belong outside of that dominant culture
than for those who exist within it. Not only must we consider
patriarchal and colonial systems of oppression, we must
consider the ways in which they combine by understanding
how race, sexuality, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and
other factors affect women. It is not an issue of gender alone.
In addition to understanding the lens of postcolonial feminism,
it is crucial to understand the culture of Chicanas. In their 2003
study “Sources of Resilience Among Chicano/a Youth: Forging
Identities in the Borderlands,” Lori K Holleran and Margaret
A. Waller report that Chicana culture is strongly founded on
community: “One theme . . . [identifies] family as a sort of
oasis, providing support and comfort in an otherwise hostile
and unrewarding environment” (341). This foundational theme
46Spring 2022 Essais
is described as collectivism, which “involves mutual empathy,
subordinating personal desires to the interests of the group, and
conformity to the expectations of the group” (338-339), which
is strongly opposed to “the individualistic, competitive, and
achievement-oriented dominant American mainstream” (338).
Thus, Chicana youth growing up steeped in American culture,
with their collectivist families at their backs, will grow into a
unique position of having to choose how to assimilate both
cultures into their everyday lives. The conclusion that Holleran
and Waller reach states that “Chicano/a adolescents draw upon
traditional cultural values and beliefs as a means of making
meaning and coping with their world” (342). These traditional
cultural values will be carried with Chicanas as they move through
the world, and even as they leave their homes. While Western
culture will be the world they live in, Mexican culture will be
the one they carry within themselves.
Certain scholars have gone so far as to argue that there is
a modern day Mexican diaspora within America. While the
term diaspora has historically referred to displaced Jewish people
(Rinderle 294), in recent years and especially in the field of
postcolonialism, it has been applied to any cultural group that is
displaced. There are many different definitions for what exactly
a diaspora is, but writer Susana Rinderle argues,
People of Mexican descent in the United States are
a diaspora because they have experienced the following:
(a) a history of physical displacement, (b) cultural
dislocation and hybridity, (c) a yearning for homeland,
(d) structural displacement and a complex structural
relationship between nation-state and diaspora, (e)
alienation from the hostland, and (f) a collective identity
defined by the relationship between homeland and hostland.
(295)
These criteria will be useful as I examine the ways in which
Cisneros belongs to this diasporic group and how her female
characters embody the characteristics of that identity.
47Voice and Power Walker
Power Taken and Reclaimed
One of the more complicated stories in Woman Hollering
Creek is “Never Marry a Mexican,” in which Clemencia, an
unmarried Mexican woman whose mother was born in America
and whose father was raised across the border, recounts her
experiences seducing a white man, Drew, and later his son.
It is worth analyzing due to Clemencia’s interpretation and
manipulation of feminism. She readily admits that she is not
a good person, calling herself “vindictive and cruel” (64), but
confesses she loves the manipulation she carries out on the men in
her life. In addition to this manipulation, she only acknowledges
white men as legitimate, confessing that she does not see Mexican
men to be real men (65). As well as her internalized racism,
Clemenica also struggles with her ambiguous socioeconomic
position, which further cements her occupation of a liminal
space. She even outright says she exists between classes, saying,
“I’m amphibious. I’m a person who does not belong to any class”
(67). The main way that Clemencia reclaims her voice from
the position of a liminal space is by using her sexuality and, to
recall Cixous, reclaiming “the body which has been more than
confiscated from her” (880). More than anything else, her struggles
are displayed and experienced through her body. In “Cisneros’s
‘Terrible’ Women: Recuperating the Erotic as a Feminist Source,”
Maythee G. Rojas claims, “Because their bodies have historically
served as sites of multiple oppressions, women of color find
it almost impossible to exclude their physical selves from their
struggles for consciousness, opposition, and change” (Rojas
135). With this in mind, it becomes evident why Clemencia is
so fixated on using sex to manipulate the men in her life. Her
actions truly embody liminality; she creates her own rules around
sexuality and femininity, repurposing the stereotype of a mother
into an erotic figure. This reimagination, while perhaps not the
most pleasant subversion of traditional roles, essentially turns the
situation on its head. Not only does Clemenica occupy a liminal
space as a woman, she also occupies a cultural liminality, similar
to Cisneros herself.
48Spring 2022 Essais
Whether Clemencia is a good person is irrelevant; her power
is what matters. She has lived a life entirely lacking in power
and is taking it back in any way that she can, which is evident in
how she enjoys and savors her ability to dictate her relationships
with both Drew and his son. She is entirely in charge, and gets
to manipulate not only how and when they meet but also how
those men see her—as a mother, a lover, and a mistress, she almost
becomes a goddess figure. It starts to be somewhat difficult to
blame her for taking pleasure in the toxicity of her relationships,
because she is finally in charge. In the liminal space she occupies,
the rules are so changed that power becomes mutable. Her position
as a Mexican woman who refuses to marry within her culture of
origin means she gets to grab hold of that power. Her defiance of
stereotypes and traditional rules allows her to find a voice that she
projects through her body. Everything she does is grounded in
this and in sex—she has risen above traditional femininity, and
her will dictates the outcome of her relationships. For the first
time, she gets to be in charge.
This display of liminality and abandonment of the script seen
in “Never Marry a Mexican” can also be seen in the story “Woman
Hollering Creek.” It tells the story of Cleófilas, a young woman
from Mexico who marries a man that takes her across the border
into Texas, where he physically abuses her. Cleófilas struggles
with a lack of independence and power in the relationship and
in her town, as she does not speak English and must rely on her
husband for most things. She eventually manages to escape by
asking for help when she goes to a doctor’s appointment and is
rescued by Felice, a friend of the nurse whom she asks for help,
who drives her back to Mexico. Not only is Cleófilas stifled by
the barrier of language, she is also held back by the misogynistic
and violent town in which she lives. She is haunted by the stories
of the unnamed victims that exist around her: brutally murdered
victims of domestic abuse whose names are displayed in the
daily paper (Cisneros 50). This violence follows her around and
contributes to an invisible structure robbing her of her agency:
she lives in a “town of dust and despair” (49) and is surrounded
by men who have proven themselves willing to silence any
49Voice and Power Walker
women that stand in opposition to them. Her husband expects
housework to be performed “like at his mother’s” (48), effectively
trapping her in Mexican stereotypes while they are surrounded
by America. She belongs to the Mexican diaspora in that she
has a “yearning for the homeland” and an “alienation from the
hostland” (Rinderle 295) with nowhere left to go.
In many ways, Cleófilas represents the traditionally stifled
Chicana woman breaking free from her chains and creating a new
identity. This can be seen in the way that Cisneros reimagines
the myth of La Llorona, who is traditionally understood as the
weeping ghost of a woman who drowned her own children
(50). Jacqueline Doyle notes, “La Llorona weeps . . . because
there are no other options in her culture . . . [she signifies]
the ‘long-suffering Mexican mother’” (57). Cisneros wields
this interpretation with tremendous skill, as Cleófilas fills this
stereotype in a very distinct way. What is notable about Cisneros’s
manipulation of the original myth is her association with water;
not its capacity for death and pain, but for new life. The stream in
the story is described as a “good-size alive thing” with “a voice
all its own” (49-50), and it carries significant meaning for Cleófilas.
She is naÏve, and carries a view of life where there are only ever
two options: pain or rage—for Cleófilas—are the only possible
reasons for the name of the creek to be “Woman Hollering.” From
her perspective, she sees no other possibilities. We see, of course,
that her mind and fate change as she drives away from her life
in Seguín, as she hears Felice holler simply because she enjoys
the name of the creek (Cisneros 53). Cleófilas remembers her
initial interpretation and thinks, “Pain or rage, perhaps, but not
a hoot like the one Felice had just let go . . . Then Felice began
laughing again, but it wasn’t Felice laughing. It was gurgling out
of her own throat, a long ribbon of laughter, like water” (Cisneros
54). It “wasn’t Felice laughing”—the holler is that of La Llorona,
of Cleófilas, of Felice, and of all of the nameless victims. It is the
freedom of every Chicana woman given voice. In Doyle’s words,
La Llorona has been released from her tears (59).
While Cisneros demonstrates the ways Chicanas regain
power and voice through her narratives, she also displays it in
50Spring 2022 Essais
her bilingual writing style. In “Woman Hollering Creek,” Felice’s
speech is described as “Spanish pocked with English” (53), which is
an example of this bilinguality. Cisneros’s bold weaving of the two
languages together defies the expectations not only of the dominant
Western culture but also of Mexican culture. Cortés-Conde
and Boxer state in their article “Bilingual Word-Play in Literary
Discourse: the Creation of Relational Identity” that the identity of
multicultural and multilingual individuals (specifically Chicanas)
is “neither dominant nor dominated (nor assimilated) . . . Above
all it is an identity that is fluid . . . it refuses to be labelled and
categorized” (137). Chicanas move between the collectivism
of their culture of origin and the individuality of American
culture, and the fact that they are fully dedicated to neither
culture is illustrated in Cisneros’s use of both Spanish and English.
Cortés-Conde and Boxer coin the term “relational identity” to
describe this unique cultural position and argue that rather
than mixing two languages, Cisneros creates an entirely new
system that can appeal to both the bi- and monolingual reader
(139). Not only does she mix standard English with standard
Spanish, she also makes frequent use of slang and colloquialisms
from both languages. As Fanon asserts, language exists as a direct
reflection of everything that is contained within “the world
expressed and implied by that language” (9); thus, Cisneros’s
refusal to remain within one language is a reflection of the way
she is both literally reclaiming her voice and inviting her readers
to participate in the unique blend of cultural markers that make
up her experience.
The use of language is, more than anything else, an outward
performance of one’s identity. In his article “Whose Lady of
Guadalupe?” Bernardo P. Gallegos describes the intersection
of performance and postcolonial theories, asserting that “As
postcolonial indigenous and Latina/o scholars . . .We carry out
our work in institutional contexts that privilege certain stories
and confer legitimacy on our own scholarly work” (188) and “we
are in a sense working under the ‘colonial’ gaze” (189). In that
light, Cisneros’s writing style is in direct defiance to the discursive
war that is waged beneath the colonial gaze. Her writing and
51Voice and Power Walker
cultural experience as a Chicana exists in a liminal space. She
weaves in phrases and cultural references that, to a reader who
does not speak both Spanish and English, are not immediately
understood. What may seem careless or casual on the surface
is a carefully constructed system designed to act as a signal to
those who also exist between cultures. In “Translingualism as
Creative Revolt,” Hannah Tate Williams claims there is “a clear
relationship between the author and the reader . . . [Cisneros]
constructs her Spanish/English identity so that it is at least
partially legible, in the hope that her readers will make the effort
to decipher, appreciate, and interact with it” (7). Cisneros’s
writing is at its core working to bring awareness to her distinctive
position as a Chicana.
The concept of a liminal space is one that returns consistently
throughout Cisneros’s writing. While Doyle argues that Cleófilas
crosses a boundary that manifests itself physically, socially, and
mentally (65), I would take the argument one step further to
claim that Cisneros is attempting to show how both herself
and her characters have crossed into this borderland—a liminal
space—a space that they will not exit. Her writing means to
celebrate the cultural occupation of this liminality in all respects.
The borderland exists literally between America and Mexico, but
it also exists figuratively and is displayed in Chicano/a culture.
Traditionally, the performance of identity is dictated by strict
rules—in a postcolonial light, this is referred to by Gallegos as
the extension of the “colonial classificatory system” (186). In a
feminist read, this could be seen in Cixous’s emphasis on “the body
which has been more than confiscated from [women]” (880), and
in Pérez’s claim that women have been “erased and silenced” (13).
However, when women of color (specifically Chicanas) occupy
the area between indigenous and white, between colonizer and
colonized, and between the different cultural expectations of
women in America and Mexico, the rules change. This can be
seen in many practical applications. Cortés-Conde and Boxer
claim that “It is only the bilingualism of the elites . . . that is seen
as an asset for the learned” (138). By specifically using colloquial,
“uneducated” English mixed with Spanish (commonly referred
52Spring 2022 Essais
to as “Spanglish”), and by giving this voice to her characters,
Cisneros sheds the performance that has been dictated for her
and other Chicanas and essentially abandons the script. Her
characters’ narrative purpose is not to serve men or to cater to
the colonial gaze but to find ways to exist outside of them. Their
liminality, rather than being something to escape, becomes
something to celebrate.
Within “Woman Hollering Creek,” the clearest example of
a celebrated liminal space is shown in Felice. The majority
of the story shows Cleófilas’s life as a stifled woman, brought
across the border and never given the tools to learn how to
exist in her new footing. The direct contrast to this is Felice, who
is the embodiment of everything Cleófilas thought women
could never be. She is not expected to conform to the Mexican
or the American ideals of femininity—Felice is more masculine
than Cleófilas thought was “allowed,” and is not ashamed of
it in the slightest. She makes no attempt to sanitize her speech
in a way that would be more digestible for Americans, and
she does not hide the fact that her life has been built by herself.
She owns her car outright, has a job, and does what she
wants; she creates her own space. The way she occupies her
liminal space is what gives Cleófilas the opportunity to form her
own identity outside of what has been dictated for her. Cleófilas
only learns of the possibility of happiness, of living and yelling
just for the pleasure of doing so, when she is escaping her
husband and the town he took her to. She leaves a society that
is unfit for her and returns to her culture of origin changed by her
experiences. She will never be the same or fit into either culture
wholly, but she learns from Felice that there is an opportunity
for happiness in that.
Liminality in Practice
Ultimately, Cisneros is intensely aware of her position both
as a woman and as a Chicana. Her work reflects the ways in
which she and others can take back the power that, because of
their occupation in a liminal space, is limited. Anna Sampaio, in
her article “Transnational Feminism in a New Global Matrix,”
53Voice and Power Walker says, “women who have been marginalized have sought to weave new forms of resistance in a world increasingly hostile to their needs” (197), and as Pérez notes, history is written by those in power. The intersectionality of Chicanas is vital to their identity and must be recognized in order for them to gain the power they are owed and to write their own history. Cisneros’s form of resistance is in forcing the world to hear her, amplified through her characters and displayed in both her writing style and her manipulation of mythology and folklore. To be able to project her voice out of a liminal space and to demand the world recognize that space as legitimate, Cisneros is paving the way for other Chicanas to become comfortable in their own liminality and to make their voices heard. 54
Spring 2022 Essais
Works Cited
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1, no. 4, 1976, pp. 875-93.
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Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality,
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Recuperating the Erotic as a Feminist Source in ‘Never
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