in a heartbeat

“Woman Hollering Creek” seemed to chronicle and follow a heartbeat. One representing love. This book’s love, its stories, its heartbeats, were at times slow, steady, and poignant. Other times, it captured the Chicana experience and palpitated and fluttered like a ladybug in a glass jar. The love in this book, and moreover the stories in this book were, much like love, sometimes short, and sometimes eternal. At times, a bit predictable and practical, other times a fantastic freefall into an unknown oblivion. Strong, yet vulnerable.

After reading the first half of the book, consisting of shorter stories, I found the last two stories “Bien Pretty” and “The Eyes of Zapata” initially unwelcome. I was thoroughly enjoying the short format of the stories of the book when while languishing and leisurely letting myself absorb their content, but alas, I still pondered “when is this story going to end?” Maybe it is just my short attention span, or that in “The Eyes of Zapata”, I was taken aback by the analogy of the bird flying and found it (a bit) less realistic than the other stories in the book. However, with time, I started to falter and again become weak to Cisnero’s literary charms. I found myself becoming engaged in the stories, so much so that at times I felt as more of an actor in the books than a reader. And thought it may seem an obvious statement to make, I enjoyed the somewhat chronological order (in the age of the narrator) of the stories….from the tender and young love of a friend “Lucy”, to a different sort of love between Lupe and Flavio in “Bien Pretty”.

I also appreciate that some of the stories had a specific time and place, from the modern San Francisco to the late 19th century. I also really appreciated that Cisneros touched on Chicana culture in “Bien Pretty”, and took someone raised in the US and used her as a character in her story.

This book was a pleasure to read. Like popcorn at the movie theatre, I just wanted more and more (except I am sure “Woman Hollering Creek” is probably less in calories!).