Gender Borders

Sandra Cisneros is my favorite Latina author. This is due, in part, because I've been reading her for so long. It seems like I've been going through her work since Grade School, just because she's been anthologized so much. "Woman Hollering Creek" is not a story for Grade Schoolers, though. It contains a lot of adult themes, and the plot builds up to a really epic border crossing.
"Woman Hollering Creek" is basically about a reverse border crossing. We often think about people crossing the Mexican Border in order to come here and stay in America, but this is about a woman who goes back. The protagonist, Cleofilas, marries a man and comes to America with him. They have a child together, but their marriage quickly falls apart. He begins beating her, and when she is pregnant with their second child she decides that she has to leave to return to her father. The woman who takes her back is a wild, liberated individual, which shocks Cleofilas.
This story crosses the border of Gender Roles. Cleofilas had novel ideas about how her life should play out, and what her role was as a wife. However, after she begins being abused, she has to muster the courage to break the bonds of tradition, and reject her husband. This destruction of a relationship is a rarity in the family-centric latino culture. The woman who transports Cleofilas across the border represents the end-stages of the liberation that Cleofilas has began to undertake by leaving her husband. She is unmarried and drives a truck, and Cleofilas finds this strange and admirable. This story is a stirring piece of feminist literature, and will be remembered as such.