Reception
Cisneros has been honored with several awards as a result of Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, including the PEN Center West Award for best fiction, the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, and, in 1993, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. K. Prescott states that once the book was published, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories was well-received because women of many cultures could relate to the stories: "Cisneros surveys woman's condition—a condition that is both precisely Latina and general to women everywhere. Her characters include preadolescent girls, disappointed brides, religious women, consoling partners and deeply cynical women who enjoy devouring men. They are without exception strong girls, strong women." Marcia Tager comments again on the characters, saying that Cisneros "writes with humour and love about people she knows intimately". For critic Ilan Stavans, the stories are not just words, but "a mosaic of voices of Mexican-Americans who joke, love, hate and comment on fame and sexuality... They are verbal photographs, memorabilia, reminiscences of growing up in a Hispanic milieu." The American Library Journal and The New York Times honoured Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories as a noteworthy book of the year. The New York Times reviewer Bebe Moore Campbell wrote in 1991 that " stories about women struggling to take control of their lives traverse geographical, historical and emotional borders and invite us into the souls of characters as unforgettable as the first kiss". Apart from much praise, one criticism is that Cisneros stereotypes Hispanic men and women in her stories. Stavans argues that the males "are always abusive, alcoholic and egotistical", while the women are "naïve doll-like".
Susan Wood comments on the publication of Woman Hollering Creek by Random House: "Despite the growing number and influence of Latinos in the USA, the only identifiably Latin's names–with a few exceptions like Oscar Hijuelos–on books published by major houses are those translations of Latin American novels."
Read more about this topic: Woman Hollering Creek And Other Stories
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