Comparing "...And the Earth DId Not Devour Him" and "Aria".

In both of these works, the families of the main characters take different approaches to dealing with being Mexican in a gringo society. In Earth the family clings on to their Mexican roots, language and close neighbors in the town they live in. In Aria, the family assimilates into the gringo society by learning to speak English. It is important to note that they live in very different social atmospheres. The family in Earth is located in a place where there are a lot of other Mexican-Americans that also work out in the field with them. In Aria, the family lives in an all white neighborhood and is almost completely cut off from communicating with others in the community. This, alone, is a difference between the two works that could explain the differences in the ways that the families dealt with their situations. Instead of asking why they took these routes, I want to juxtapose the way these choices affected the roles of the mothers of each respective family.

In the novella ...The Earth Did Not Devour Him, the section entitled "The Night Before Christmas" tells the story of the mother going to buy presents for her children who has not partaken in the gringo society and has, more or less, been a shut in. What essentially happens is that she has a panic attack when she goes into the toy store and has to walk out without bringing home any presents for her children. There are many factors that could cause something like this but this case was most likely due to culture shock. After spending so much time in the comfort of her simple, Spanish-speaking home, she ventures out into the English speaking part of the town she lives in where the atmosphere, the people and the store presentation freaks her out so much, her body goes into a state of panic. One of the last things said in this section is the husband to the wife telling her "Just stay here inside the house and don't leave the yard. There's no need for it anyway. I'll bring you everything you need"(134). Her alienation from he gringo society is not a bad thing but it has led to her being stuck in her house and taking on a role of subservience and naïveté .

In Aria, the mother of the family takes on a completely different role after the family starts to adopt English. The husband did not speak as much as his wife did so it caused her to be better than him at it. Which, in turn, led her to be the number one public communicator for the family. In other words, she wears the pants when they're out in public. She even said the prayers at the dinner table because she could speak better and "even on formal occasions, when there were guests in the house" (24). She isn't a completely free feminist that opts out of shaving her legs but she does have more freedom than the mother in ...The Earth Did Not Devour Him simply because she can communicate and interact with the gringos.

Would a Mexican-American woman learning English who has previously been isolated because of the gringo language barrier automatically shed gender roles if she were to learn English? Would it matter if her husband was as fluent as she was?

Never Marry a Mexican

The passage I will be dissecting will be the following from the piece Never Marry A Mexican written by Sandra Cisneros.

I can tell from the way [the boy] looks at me, I have him in my power. Come, sparrow. I have the patience of eternity. Come to mamita. My stupid little bird. I don't move. I don't startle him. I let him nibble. All, all for you. Rub his belly. Stroke him. Before I snap my teeth.

This happens towards the end of the passage after the narrator has established that she had an affair with the "boy's" father as well as the "boy", who is actually a grown man with a child of his own. The recurring motif of calling the man a boy symbolically shows that the narrator has power over him after explicitly say that she has this power over him. It is an erotic power reinforced by the diction of letting the boy "nibble" at her as well as her actions of rubbing his belly and "stroking" him. This not only fits into the recurring theme of sexuality throughout the entire piece, but is the highpoint in it's expression.

Her assertion of power goes beyond what is purely sexual when she calls him "my stupid little bird" after calling him a sparrow as if to demean him. It's curious that the word sparrow was chosen to describe him before calling him stupid since sparrows, as with most birds, are intelligent creatures. Not to mention, the symbolic meaning of flight and its connotations with freedom almost make these thoughts ironic considering the power the narrator claims she has over this boy. This marks a sort of regression in her power over him, noting that it is not a complete power. This is also duly noted noted with the use of the word mamita, an endearing term which literally translates into "little mama". Although she has this sexual power over this boy, she also takes on this almost motherly role willing to wait "for eternity" as well as rubbing his belly.

This internalized monologue has a very sexual mood where implied sexuality and eroticism blend when taking into context the rest of the piece. But as it stands on it's own, there is a degree of ambiguity to it, highlighted by the motherly undertones it provides. Given this, both interpretations make a lot of sense considering that the narrator admittedly had an affair with the boy's father and particularly when the boy was being born in a hospital. Could it be that she has "motherly" feeling toward him as well as sexual attraction? Is there a sort of freedom to being in that position being able to explore different facets of her sexuality; both the caregiver and the taker/heartbreaker?

After all, the narrator ends this extraction with "Before I snap my teeth" which is makes this passage even more ambiguous considering that it carries obvious sexual connotations compared to a sort of innate animal characteristic of a mother fending off attackers to protect her young. The use of the word "boy" makes that character act as a foil to make that point even more prominent. It is very much like the mother bear protecting her cubs.

As for a connection with the greater meaning of the prose, it is difficult to really see a point that she was trying to explicitly make. There is nothing specifically about why you should not marry a Mexican but perhaps her anecdotes are supposed to serve as reasons not to when she tells of no Mexican man being able to satisfy her love. An interpretation that I am partial to is that she starts to embody a motherly role to fill that void of love that is impossible for a man to fill for her. By the end of the piece, it seemed to have started working as the narrator's tone moves away from something along the lines of bitter resentment to something more at peace with the nature of humanity.

Note: My question for discussion is the bolded paragraph above.