Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories

This collection of short stories is organized into three parts that trace a rough arc from childhood through adolescence to adulthood, drawing on the experiences of Mexican American characters living primarily in Texas and Mexico. The stories vary widely in form, from traditional narratives to monologues, letters, and lyrical vignettes, but they share a focus on the lives of Chicana and Latino characters navigating the tensions between cultures, languages, and expectations.

Part I gathers seven short pieces narrated by or about young children. In the opening story, "My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn," an unnamed girl celebrates her friendship with Lucy Anguiano, a Texas girl from a large, poor family, and imagines they could be sisters as they share small pleasures like splitting Popsicles and braiding each other's hair. In "Eleven," Rachel turns eleven and reflects that growing older means carrying all younger ages inside oneself; her teacher, Mrs. Price, forces her to wear an ugly, unclaimed red sweater, and the resulting humiliation ruins her birthday. "Salvador Late or Early" sketches a boy whose teacher cannot remember his name as he wakes, feeds, and walks his younger brothers to school each morning, carrying enormous responsibilities before dissolving from view at the schoolyard gate. "Mexican Movies" captures a child's experience of family outings to Mexican films: The father sends the children to the lobby during romantic scenes, and the parents carry the sleeping children home afterward. "Barbie-Q" follows two girls who own only two Barbie dolls and one outfit each; at a flea market, they discover water-damaged dolls from a warehouse fire and buy as many as they can, accepting imperfections they can keep hidden. In "Mericans," a girl named Micaela waits outside a Mexican basilica with her brothers while their devout grandmother prays inside for the entire family. An American tourist couple is surprised when the children speak English; one brother replies that they are Americans, using the blended word that gives the story its title and signals the children's dual identity. The section closes with "Tepeyac," in which the narrator recalls childhood evenings walking home with her grandfather, Abuelito, from his shop near the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City. Years later, Abuelito has died, the house has been sold, and the narrator remains the sole keeper of memory.

Part II contains two stories focused on adolescent girls. "One Holy Night" is narrated by an eighth-grade girl who recounts her sexual initiation by a man she knows as Boy Baby, who claims descent from ancient Mayan kings. The narrator sells cucumbers from a pushcart, and Boy Baby courts her over several Saturdays before they have sex. After her grandmother, Abuelita, discovers the truth, the narrator learns she is pregnant. Abuelita burns the pushcart, calls her a sinvergüenza (shameless one), and sends her to relatives in Mexico, just as the narrator's own mother had been sent away under similar circumstances. A letter reveals that Boy Baby's real name is Chato; he is thirty-seven, the son of a knife sharpener, with no Mayan ancestry. Newspaper clippings link him to eleven murdered women found near a cave. The narrator, pregnant and isolated, cannot reconcile her feelings with this revelation. In "My Tocaya," Patricia Chávez, a high school student, tells the story of her tocaya (namesake), Patricia Bernadette Benavídez, a thirteen-year-old who works at her father's taco restaurant. The narrator befriends Trish primarily because Trish lives next door to a boy the narrator likes. When Trish disappears, a body found in a drain ditch is misidentified as hers. Three days later, Trish shows up alive at a police station.

Part III brings together the collection's longest narratives alongside several brief pieces, all centered on adult experience. The title story, "Woman Hollering Creek," follows Cleófilas Enriqueta DeLeón Hernández, a young Mexican woman raised on telenovelas (television soap operas) who marries Juan Pedro Martínez Sánchez and crosses the border to live in Seguin, Texas, expecting a life of passion. Instead she finds an isolated town and a husband who becomes physically abusive. Without money, English, or a car, Cleófilas feels trapped. She grows fascinated by the creek behind their house, Woman Hollering Creek, and wonders whether its name refers to pain or rage, connecting it to the legend of La Llorona, the weeping woman who drowned her children. Pregnant with a second child, she visits a clinic where Graciela, a healthcare worker, notices her bruises and arranges for Felice, an independent Chicana woman who owns her own pickup truck, to drive Cleófilas to a bus station. As they cross the creek, Felice lets out a joyful holler, and Cleófilas, astonished by this self-sufficient woman, begins to laugh.

"Never Marry a Mexican" is narrated by Clemencia, a Chicana painter who addresses Drew, her former married white lover and art teacher. Clemencia's American-born mother had warned her never to marry a Mexican, a warning rooted in the mother's own unhappy cross-border marriage to Clemencia's father, a man from Mexico City. Even before the father dies, the mother begins seeing a white man named Owen Lambert, whom she eventually marries, an act Clemencia cannot forgive. Clemencia reveals she slept with Drew the night his wife gave birth to their son and, years later, seduces Drew's teenage son in an act of calculated revenge. "Eyes of Zapata" is narrated by Inés Alfaro, a lover of the Mexican revolutionary general Emiliano Zapata, as she watches him sleep. She recalls their meeting at a country fair, her father's disowning her, and the long years of revolution marked by violence and Zapata's many other women. Inés possesses a supernatural ability, inherited from her mother and aunt, to fly at night as an owl. Her vision ultimately expands to foresee Zapata's assassination, her own death, and a distant future in which the family's land and legacy will be lost.

Shorter Part III pieces include gossip-driven sketches, a brief vignette about lovers sharing bread while driving through streets that carry different memories for each, and a parallel fable about a man and a woman who drink at the same bar but never meet. "Remember the Alamo" presents Rudy Cantú, who performs as "Tristán" at a San Antonio club; long lists of names punctuating the story evoke an AIDS memorial.

"Little Miracles, Kept Promises" takes the form of letters and prayers left at shrines across Texas. The longest entry belongs to Rosario (Chayo) De León, an artist who has cut off her lifelong braid and left it at the shrine of the Virgen de Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint. Chayo describes her rejection of her family's expectations and her gradual understanding of the Virgen as an incarnation of Tonantzín, the pre-Columbian mother goddess whose temple stood on the same hill. This realization allows Chayo to accept her identity as an artist and as her ancestors' child.

The collection closes with "Bien Pretty," narrated by Lupe Arredondo, a Chicana artist who moves from San Francisco to San Antonio after a breakup. While house-sitting, she hires an exterminator named Flavio Munguía and asks him to model for a painting based on the Popocatépetl and Ixtaccíhuatl legend, a myth about two lovers transformed into volcanoes. They become lovers, and Lupe describes making love in Spanish as transformative. When Flavio reveals he has seven sons and departs for Mexico, Lupe grieves, burns his letters, and gradually returns to her art. She reverses the genders in her volcano painting, watches grackles gather at sunset, and finds a renewed sense of being alive in the present.