The ultimate goal is to fuse your "data" (notes from your research, other people's scholarship) with your "hypothesis" (your argument, based on your interpretation of a written work). But creating something seamless is a challenge.
I wrote the following, based off the Sandra Cisneros short story "One Holy Night," for ENG 209: Research Writing. Though there is a lot of interesting information and analysis, note all the snags that are relevant to fusion problems, including but not limited to too much plot summary, touching lots of interesting points but not delving sufficiently into any of them, and citations jammed in awkwardly.
March 18, 2012
Final DraftENG 209
La fe[men]ista in “One Holy Night”
Sandra Cisneros’s short story “One Holy Night” is an extended metaphor for the situation of all teenage Chicanas, seeing their cultural identity as the result of a consensual but at times dishonest and imbalanced romance between the United States and Mexico. Her story, an unplanned teenage pregnancy after a brief relationship with a man she hardly knew, follows what can be deemed either an unfortunate or merely typical tradition.
I don’t know how many girls have gone bad from selling cucumbers. I know I’m not the first. My mother took the crooked walk too, I’m told, and I’m sure my Abuelita has her own story, but it’s not my place to ask. (Cisneros 10)
The father, whom she calls “Boy Baby” and who calls himself Chaq Uxmal Paloquín, claims that he is descended from ancient Mayan royalty. “He said he would love me like a revolution, like a religion.” (10) His diction in and of itself, of course, is alluring: all teenagers are in a personal phase of revolt against figures of parental authority, and often end up buying into new “religions,” literal spiritualities or figurative patterns of behavior, to replace the dogmas they were raised with. With this word choice, he is taking advantage of her mindset.
For whatever reason, after three Saturdays of frequenting her pushcart, his attempt at emotional seduction is successful. “I didn’t see him after that till the day he brought me Kool-Aid in a plastic cup. Then I knew what I felt for him.” (11) Similar to the blind devotion of a cult member drinking the drugged Kool-Aid of a leader, what she “feels” for Boy Baby is out of her control; it is more her childish explanation for the biological response she is feeling. Making a distinction between the chemistry of attraction and actual feelings of love is impossible.
Later, when he sleeps with her in his room behind an auto repair shop, taking her as his “queen,” the physical half of the seduction is complete. About a month later when she discovers she is expecting a baby, the real identity of the father is brought to light: he is actually 37 year-old Chato, which means “fat-face,” with absolutely no Mayan blood or anything else remarkable to his name.
She is then, the shame of the family, sent back to live in Mexico. “Abuela burned the pushcart and sent me here, miles from home, in this town of dust, with one wrinkled witch woman who rubs my belly with jade, and sixteen nosy cousins.” (10) The place of her origin has become the place of banishment, ironically.
‘One Holy Night’ brings to an abrupt halt the series of memory pieces in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. From a small Mexican town, a young narrator recounts, almost in the form of a testimonio, the events that led up to her ‘Holy Night’ with an older man and her subsequent exile. (Brady 137)
The narrator is present in the action of the story, but without enough knowledge of what is going on to be fully intellectually present, so to speak. Events unfold around here while her perception stays floating, detached. She is the outside narrator of her own life, which perhaps is why Cisneros never gives her even a first name by which the reader could identify her.
Not her name and a connected record, but her body tells the story of what happened. The most obvious act of recording history is the conception of a baby, a result of the liason that can never be erased and will grow and live and become the progenitor of its own stories. But, even with this in play, her mind hovers in a state of psychological dissociation.
This tone--participating without being able to conceive any consequences or meaning--puts the story in the category of “loiterature,” a term coined by Ross Chambers, writing where the protagonists are actively engaged not via visible acts of contribution but via their reflections, observations, and perceptions, adding movement to the mundane and still. It contrasts the idea of an active protagonist who is always running from scene to scene and shaping events; it envisions a protagonist who is clearly at the center of a story but not necessarily the instigator of it.
Loiterly writing is spatial writing--tricky in its use of juxtaposition and humor, and wry in its cruising observations on the spatial inscriptions of social life. The stories of Woman Hollering Creek, like loiterature, explore the links between wandering around and unauthorized desire, between ruses and prohibitions, playing with episodicity and digression to make observations on contemporary Chicana life and to bring ‘the everyday’ into sharp focus. (Brady 119)
The narrator spends much of her time “wandering around” with her pushcart, occupying a societal role as a vendor that many would label a man’s. Her “unauthorized desire” is her sexual curiosity, an inevitable biological truth embedded in any girl’s coming of age, yet left unaddressed by any potential mentors--such as her abuela--until after there are consequences. The “prohibition” was the tacit “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of Chicanas regarding how they set limits, respect, and address the desires of their bodies.As an uninformed thirteen year-old, clearly with no guidance given by any parental figure, she has no choice but to narrate as a “loiterer” when it comes to sexuality. From the beginning, her background knowledge is marked more by gaps in education and uninformed desires than any actual understanding. It is formed by holes of negative space, not positive knowledge.
All I know is that I didn’t want it like that. Not against the bricks or hunkering in somebody’s car. I wanted it come undone like gold thread, like a tent full of birds. The way it’s supposed to be, the way I knew it would be when I met Boy Baby. (Cisneros 11)
Speaking in this voice, still a pre-adolescent child in so many ways, Cisneros is able to make an underhanded attack on the situation. The narrator’s only understanding is fulll of archetypal references to the purity of the color gold and the transcendence of birds in fight, a childlike simplification of what “love” is, the stuff of fairy tales. But this apparent lack of savviness belies its inherent intelligence, the kind that is instinctual, not taught. “Cisneros’s seemingly straightforward narrative style masks its shrewdness by deploying child-like or nonchalant voices to destabilize the apparent solidity and neutrality of the built environment.” (Brady 119)What environment is this? Ultimately, it is one where space is defined psychologically. The narrator is being punished for being a young female working outside the home, not staying in the domestic, inside sphere. Running the pushcart on her own in the streets, she is a bread-winner, not a mother who cooks, cleans, bears, and raises children. Once again, work that yields a young female commercial gain is an unspoken transgression.
‘One Holy Night’ explores how the threat of violence to women reinscribes gendered space. If the street ‘properly’ belong to men, women working on corners and in front of stores [such as the narrator] are interlopers--suspect, available, and unprotected. They are made responsible when attacked because a ‘good girl’ would know better. (Brady 135)
So by daring to walk on her own and make her own living, is she condemning herself to “walk the crooked walk” (Cisneros 10) of her mother? Are Chicanas who become pregnant as teenagers being punished for not waiting inside for the male to come to them, marry them, and then sanctify their sexuality as strictly a means to motherhood? Going outside of expectations earns her the “bad girl” association.
And breaking societal expectations usually disrespects more taboos than breaking laws. If something is put into law, the subtle suggestion is that there is room for debate; otherwise it would not have to be set down and enforced. When it is not codified into law, as in the cultural norms of Chicanos, the suggestion is that it is an instinct. To go against it is to go against something that a subculture is saying is so obvious, it should not have to be written down.
When Abuelita burns the pushcart, mentioned previously, it is renouncing the narrator’s attempt at being a self-sufficient female. This suggests that she was trespassing, breaking the rules of the unspoken public/private binary to which society as a whole so often subconsciously subscribes. Public space is mistakenly misconstrued as dangerous and belonging to men, while the domestic setting is supposedly always safe.
Schools and the media reiterate that women must respect this and dress, act, and set personal boundaries accordingly, lest they become victims of male behavior. “A habit of blame also comes into play here. The seemingly innocuous question, ‘What was she doing there?’ blames victims for their attacks and implicitly accuses them of faulting orienteering.” (Brady 135)
While the public forum is where Boy Baby draws the narrator in, the private is where he consummates the relationship. This is the irony that contradicts what women have been taught about the public/private binary: most violent crimes occur in the home and are committed by acquaintances. (Brady 135)
The key word in this scenario being “acquaintance”: despite the sexual attraction, the narrator knows very little of Boy Baby. “What I knew of Chaq was only what he told me.” (Cisneros 11) And even when she is given the chance to learn more about him, such as when he displays his gun collection in the dirty little room behind the auto repair shop, she pushes the knowledge away.
Rifles and pistols, one rusty musket, a machine gun, and several tiny weapons with mother-of-pearl handles that looked like toys. So you’ll see who I am, he said, laying them all out on the bed of newspapers. So you’ll understand. But I didn’t want to know. (Cisneros 12)
Besides obviously being a phallic symbolism show-and-tell, Cisneros saying that they “looked like toys” reiterates the cluelessness of the narrator. The detachment and depersonalization of her experience is driven by a lack of information to contrast it against. If she had expectations, if guns and men were not placed in the category of “toys,” she could place what was going into a context of awareness.
It is after this, when the imbalance of power has been made clear although the narrator refuses or is incapable of accepting it, that Boy Baby tells her not to ever tell what he is going to do, and takes her virginity. It is a ritual, like the ancient practice of virgin sacrifices. This drives home again her lack of control over the situation, although she appears to fully consent.
[His] injunction to secrecy further ritualizes the ensuing sexual assault because it presumes a narrative of shame. So despite her desire to believe the contrary, the narrator’s agency is not located in her choice to have sex (that is something Boy Baby will ‘do’ to her) but in a choice to keep silent. The guns function simply not to guarantee the image Boy Baby builds of himself as a revolutionary but also to warn the narrator of his potential for violence. Why else would she view the guns and wish not ‘to know?’ Her rush not to know who Boy Baby really is contrasts starkly with her desire to know the rituals and secrets of romanticized heterosexuality. (Brady 138)
The term “rape” in and of itself suggests resistance. There is no physical resistance on the narrator’s part, which would give the scene a tone of consent when watched from the outside. But her mental resistance is raging in that she is not engaged at all on a psychological level. Her consent is tacit, more a lack of saying anything, and this lack is the resistance. A sexual encounter is meant to be more than a physical connection, but also an emotional one on some level. Ergo, the narrator who does not have the words to push him away does not have the words to fully embrace him either, even if she does the latter physically.
It is this lack of involvement that points back to her being a “loiterly” voice, telling more by what she is unable to articulate than what she is. “One Holy Night” is grouped with a subcategory of stories by Cisneros that “don’t identify an audience; nevertheless, they emphasize their orality, their spoken status, challenging the reader to hear the narrator rather than simply read the text.” (Brady 122)
What must be paid significant attention is how her punishment for getting pregnant is to be shipped back to Mexico, whereas crossing to the United States from Mexico is almost always the intended direction of those immigrating, the parents of Chicanos.
To say that Mexico abandoned its people would not be false, because Mexico abandons all poor Mexicans. The poor choose the American Dream and the American way of life on the other side of the border, because they don’t see a future for themselves in their own country. (Poniatowska 36)
The United States has often not delivered on its promises and claims. In the eyes of her family, the narrator has “failed” at assimilating correctly into this culture. But it’s not that she is a victim of American false advertising, but that she has fallen horrifically, egregiously out of touch with the morality they nostalgically associate with their homeland and equate with their ancestral roots.
Blame circulates among the family members, and blame circulates transnationally, with morality nostalgically located in Mexico... By coming ‘here’ because ‘there’ was no longer tenable, the familiar structures of ‘there’ are left behind... guarantors of a morality that can now be understood only as forfeited. (Brady 139)
Uncle Lalo mourns the “sentence of shame” he thought they had escaped by moving north. In his eyes, it is a problem of location. Poor location led to his niece’s fall from grace; “good” Mexicans girls--who, it should be noted, probably do not make a habit of venturing out onto the street to make their own money selling vegetables--do not become the willing victims of such circumstances. Putting sex and childbirth behind walls and within the confines of a marriage legitimizes it; the level of emotional involvement of the woman is not a factor in whether or not it warrants his approval.
Abuelita, on the other hand, sees the trouble as a manifestation of gender issues. By blaming male “infamy,” Abuelita assigns blame to herself and all her gender by default, indicating “a certain helplessness that indicates the violence of patriarchy and the inevitability of men exploiting their physical dominance over women.” (Brady 139)
Providing no resistance mentally or otherwise, it suggests that men are expected to push themselves on girls sexuality, and if the latter do not preemptively push back, any outcome is their fault. They are expected to be wary and on the defense, with no responsibility put on the male to control himself in the first place. The dynamic is far from balanced; the different expectations for each half of the gender binary make for a classic double-standard.
Much of the struggle of Chicanas is personified in the familial voices the narrator hears, an overlay of factors of nationality--what Uncle Lalo latches onto--and gender--Abuelita’s explanation. Chicanos, male and female, are subjected by society as a whole to prejudice due to their ethnicity, often erroneously not even recognized as a separate group from Mexicans. But Chicanas are a minority within a minority, still up against a patriarchy that is to a large degree deeply rooted in Mexican history.
“In short, [Chicanas face] oppression from without (an impersonal, industrialized society) and from within (machismo, or exaggerated male domination).” (Cota-Cárdenas 13) Men are dominant amongst Chicanos, and of course there is no one more ready to subjugate someone else than the already subjugated. A Chicana is an underdog within a group of underdogs, recipient of a double-whammy of prejudices.
This overwhelming sense of male authority stems from Mexican roots, the famous/infamous machismo mentality. Women classified within this simplistic framework have two options of preset identities: la virgen o la chingada, the Mexican version of the well-known “madonna-whore complex.”
The “good,” La Virgen de Guadalupe, is an amalgamation of Catholic and Aztec beliefs, like much of Mexican culture. In 1531, an apparition of La Virgen supposedly appeared to Spaniard Juan Diego and demanded the building of a shrine in Nahuatl, the Aztec language. (Brady 125)
The ensuing mass veneration of this figure, which has persisted with great vivacity right up into the present day, could be interpreted as a conversion to Catholicism, or still worshipping Aztec goddess Tonantzín under a different name; it was interpreted as both. (Brady 125) If it were truly the latter, it was a clever cover-up and a way of beating the colonizing power at its own game. The Aztecs were giving physical consent to the Spaniards by visibly altering the labeled organization of their beliefs, but resisting mentally by conceptualizing La Virgen as an avatar of Tonantzín. The Spanish successfully took advantage of their spiritual structure, but the native people of Mexico withheld the crucial element of mental acquiescence.
Regardless, however the phenomenon and its fallout were perceived, La Virgen was “capable of alternatively evoking the Catholic and meek Virgin Mother and the prepatriarchal and powerful earth goddess” (Brady 125), according to Norma Alarcón.
The “bad” side of the virgen-chingada dynamic is La Chingada, which translates--delicately--to “the screwed one.” This refers to La Malinche, the Aztec princess who, according to legend, acted as a translator for the Spanish conquistador Cortés, and was also his lover. (Cota-Cárdenas 13) This act of treachery gave the Spanish the ability to effectively rape the Aztec society as a whole, and many of the Mexican people have never forgiven her for this.Thus one half the Chicana mentality is already fragmented, a Mexican culture steeped in virgin-whore dichotomy when it comes to the perception of women. Chicanas carry this with them, plus the half of them that has been thoroughly acculturated to the United States.
The title of “One Holy Night” carries with it Biblical connotations. Most readers immediately will draw connections to Christmas carols and the birth of Christ. The juxtaposition here is that the night of the narrator and Chato’s romance is hardly a nativity scene; it is one of not birth, but seduction and conception. But, similarly, it alludes to the start of a civilization--not what it means to be Christian, but Chicana.
Willingly but unwillingly huddled above an auto-repair shop with false Mayan royalty taking advantage of her, the story of the narrator embodies this mixing, allure that would be alarm if she knew what it would come of it. The same way La Malinche’s child, half-Aztec and half-Spaniard, was considered the first mestizo, or first true Mexican, the narrator’s baby will be a true chicano or chicana. So-called “Baby Boy” was not the real baby in question in the scenario.
And of course, the Works Cited needs 2-3 more sources to be fleshed out, not to mention it is lacking the information for the primary source...
Works Cited
Brady, Mary Pat. “The Contrapuntal Geographies of Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories.”
American Literature 71.1 (1999): 117-150. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.
Cota-Cárdenas, Margarita. “The Chicana in the City as Seen in Her Literature.” Frontiers: A
Journal of Woman Studies 6.1 (1981): 13-18. Web. 11 Feb. 2012.
Kaup, Monica. “The Architecture of Ethnicity in Chicano Literature.” American Literature 69.2
(1997): 361-397. Web. 6 Feb. 2012.
Poniatowska, Elena. “Mexicanas and Chicanas.” MELUS 21.3 (1996): 35-51. Web. 11 Feb. 2012.
Russell, Stephen T. and Faye C.H. Lee. “Practitioners' Perspectives on Effective Practices for Hispanic Pregnancy Prevention.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health (2004): 142-149. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.
