Failing to Love Essay

In her story neer follow a Mexican Sandra Cisneros introduces the reader to the manifold issues surrounding the racial and sexual practiceual identity of a Mexican-American woman biography in the unify States. The story is about a Chicana woman and how she seeks avenge on a white have sexr who has rejected her by suitable the sexual tutor of his teenage son. Cisneros give life to the protagonist Clemencia and paints her as a character in a modern day to bear witness the pervasive negative impact on Mexican-American women, especi wholey on Chicanas residing inwardly the United States. Clemencia, the protagonist of the story, thinks move, remember when you used to call me your Malinalli? It was a joke, a private game in the midst of us, because you touch sensationed like a Cortes with that beard of yours. My sinfulness skin against yoursMy Malinalli, Malinche, my courtesan, you said, and yanked my head back by the braid (192). Clemencia is a painter, still she moldiness support herself in other ways too.She sometimes acts as a translator however for Clemencia Spanish is now the native language. In this discussion of her occupation, Clemencia pronounces any way you look at it, what I do to make a living is a form of prostitution (181). She sapiditys as though when she is not painting she merely sells herself to make a living, very much like La Malinche had to do in her traffichip with Cortes. Clemencia constantly allows herself to decay in love with unavailable men who atomic number 18 always get wed and always white. This pattern results from her mothers constant advice, Never Marry a Mexican. Clemencias mother, a lower-class Chicana woman from the United States who married an upper-class Mexican man, felt inescapable discrimination by both her economizes upper-class family and mainstream U.S. social club for her dark skin color. Her answer to this was to marry out, and supposedly up, by divorcing Clemencias father and marrying a white man .It is because of this example that Clemencia never sees Mexican men as strength lovers. She explains Mexican men, forget it. For a long time the men illumination off the tables or chopping meat behind the butcher counter or driving the mounds I rode to school every day, those werent men. non men I considered as potential lovers. Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Chilean, Columbian, Panamanian, Salvadorean, Bolivian, Honduran, Argentine, Dominican, Venezuelan, Guatemalan, Ecuadorean, Nicaraguan, Peruvian, Costa Rican, Paraguayan, Uruguayan, I tangle witht care. I never saw them. My mother did this to me(179). Here Clemencia is adopting the anti-Semite(a) Anglo discourse by lumping all Latinos into one, unified group. Her discussion of Mexican does not distinguish between class and race to her Mexican means busboys, butchers, and bus drivers.Mexican is no longer the nationality of the people of Mexico, but quite an a class of makers who happen to be br permit. Here Cisneros demo nstrates how the racism of dominant society in America is often internalized and serves to separate the people of disem creatored groups. Cisneros makes a rigid statement against internalized racism by showing how Clemencias rejection of men of her own race and obsession with white men ultimately leaves her lonely. Clemencia comes to the frustrating, yet teach realization that the white men in her life waste, like her, choose the mantra never marry a Mexican when she remembers the conversation Drew and she had the expiry night they spent together.Clemencia recalls in an inner dialogue, how we had agreed. All for the best. Surely I could see that, couldnt I? My own good. A good sport. A young girl like me. Hadnt I understoodresponsibilities. You didnt think? Never marry a Mexican. Never marry a Mexican. No of course. I see. I see (186). Now Clemencia is now mixed-up without a proper choice of lovers. Mexicans are out of bounds because she could never marry a Mexican, but she no w realizes that white men are also out of bounds because they too could never marry a Mexican they could never marry her. Cisneros is therefore demonstrating how internalized racism does not serve to differentiate certain ethnic Mexicans from others in the eyes of white society, and kind of only serves to isolate such Mexican-Americans from the culture to which they are supposed to feel connected.By having Clemencia reject the roles of wife and mother and instead embrace the socially deviant bawd role, Cisneros demonstrates how women who refuse socially acceptable roles often must do so at the expense of other women. In an undertake to claim agency that she would otherwise be denied as a married Chicana in dominant, patriarchal society, Clemencia embraces the role of the mistress. The mistress, because of her strictly sexual nature, is traditionally regarded as a role that reinforces male dominance in heterosexual relationships. by means of her role as mistress and her rejectio n of the role of wife or mother, she attempts to charge the patriarchal system of oppression and makes allowances for flexibility of sex-role expectations.However because the role of the mistress also depends upon there macrocosm another woman, the wife, who is betrayed by both her husband and the mistress, the mistress role does not fall upon the patriarchal system for all women. It does, in fact, reinforce patriarchal oppression of the wife/mother role. Clemencia seems to have little problem acknowledging her betrayal of other women. She candidly tells the reader Ive been accomplice, having caused deliberate pain to other women. Im despiteful and cruel, and Im capable of anything (179). then, in order to grapple subscribed gender roles and claim agency in her sexual relationships, Clemencia hurts other women. Cisneros seems to be construction that mujeres andariegas, or daring women who reject the roles society expects of them, do not sponsor to institutionally change soc iety for all women but rather must betray other women in their search for personal freedom. Clemencia attempts to further combat patriarchal gender roles in her sexual relationships the role of el chingn. When describing sex with Drew, she says I leapt inside you and split you like an apple.Opened for the other to look and not give back (185). Here Clemencia not only takes on the mans part by leaping inside, she also executes the furious actions attached to the verb chingar. Clemencia imagines that this sexual aggressiveness empowers her over Drew. She says You were ashamed to be so nakedBut I saw you for what you are, when you opened yourself for me (185). To Clemencia, sexual relations are based on power dynamics, and in order to escape the passive feminine chingada role she must embrace the possessive, dominant, masculine chingn role. Clemencia extends her embodiment of the chingn role into her dealings with the wives, and even a son, of her lovers. more than once she had sex wi th a lover while his wife was in labor with his child. She confesses it has given me a bit of crazy joy to be able to kill those women like thatTo know Ive had their husbands when they were anchored in muddied hospital rooms, their guts yanked inside out(184). Clemencias relationship with Drews son is another example of her fulfilling a sort of vindictive sexual satisfaction. She says of him I sleep with this boy, their son. To make the boy love me the way I love his father. To make him want me the way I love his fatherI can tell from the way he looks at me, I have him in my powerI let him nibbleBefore I snap by teeth (187). Therefore she seduces him not to satisfy the yearning of her body or hear, but rather to achieve sexual power of the son, which she perceives as giving her indirect power of his parents.Clemencia is ultimately left lonely without a lover, a connection to her culture, or meaningful female friendships. The reason for this lies in the world view Clemencia has tra nsmitted from her society. She perceives the world in black and white, in terms of inescapable binaries between which she must choose. She fails to become an acceptable marriage partner to Drew, she fails to escape being hurt by her lovers even as a mistress.Works CitedNever Marry a Mexican. Random House, Inc. and Vintage Books1991