Woman Hollering Creek

I just finished this book by Sandra Cisneros last night, and I am in awe. Her writing is beautiful and powerful and heart-rending, and yet it is also simple. Her descriptions are at once original and familiar, as if I had always known the perfect way to describe grackles but had only become aware of it when reading her words. Her depiction of the night sky as a watercolor, deep colors bleeding down from above, moved me. And her women, well. They are women. Women of love and sorrow. Women as fierce and unrelenting as bulls. Women as soft and forgotten as the night wind. I wonder what kind of a woman she is. How many of these stories portray her own grief and passion, and how many of them weave women into being that she wishes she were? They are imperfect women, but they are big. They stride through life with personalities and opinions all their own, and even if the people around them never look twice, they are THERE. The way these women reflect on nature, their histories, their lovers, makes me wonder if they are, in some way, more real than I am. They are present in their world, whereas sometimes I feel that I am not present in mine. I suppose this is my second goal for the summer. To be present, in my surroundings and in my self.