Changing the Backdrop: Portraiture in Sandra Cisneros’ Never Marry a Mexican

Resumen

The story Never Marry a Mexican is at the center of Sandra Cisneros' volume of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek, both in order of its appearance and in the degree of social awareness of its main character, Clemencia. The volume, published in 1992, develops the interconnecting themes of community and emancipation as it explores different facets of the Chicana experience. The awareness of the women in the stories of this collection varies from a simple epiphany concerning sexual oppression to resignation and foiled escape. In every case, however, the character attains some understanding of her own position in a world which denies her the opportunity to be central to her own existence. Cisneros suggests through the experience of the Clemencia that the attempt by the Chicana to extricate her identity from the fabric of her society results in the loss of identity altogether.¹ To restore wholeness to the identity of Clemencia, Cisneros uses a motif of metamorphosis that proposes a modification of the image of the Chicana on three levels: the historical, the personal, and the symbolic. The result of such modification is the creation of a social landscape in which the Chicana is the center and subject of the portraiture. The metamorphosis motif used by Cisneros suggests a social evolution through which the individual is not merely reborn but is recreated. By suggesting a different social landscape for her character, Cisneros proposes that the Chicana must look at herself from a perspective not made available to her in Western culture in order to discover the creature that she is. By adjusting to that perspective, she is reborn in her view of herself.