Race, Power, and Gender in Cisneros and Angelou

Introduction

Sandra Cisneros's short story Woman Hollering Creek and Still I Rise, a poem by Maya Angelou, both make powerful statements about race, power, and gender in America. Cisneros is a Chicana author, while Angelou is an African American author and poet. Woman Hollering Creek touches on issues such as domestic violence and the subjugation of women, while Still I Rise celebrates Black female identity in a culture that is both racist and sexist. Although different in both form and intent, the two works reveal the intersections between race, power, and gender in American society.

Intersections of Gender, Race, and Power

The intersection of gender, race, and power is one of the most salient themes in both Cisneros and Angelou, as both write from the perspective of minority women. In Woman Hollering Creek, Cisneros illustrates how women lack strong role models and learn their place in society primarily through male-dominated discourse: "there isn't very much to do except … to watch the latest telenovela episode and try to copy the way the women comb their hair, wear their makeup" (p. 220). The story also depicts how patriarchy and sexism can escalate into domestic violence: "Maximiliano who was said to have killed his wife … when she came at him with a mop. I had to shoot, he had said — she was armed" (p. 225).

In Still I Rise, Angelou takes a different approach, asserting confidence and self-possession as acts of resistance. Her rhetorical question — "Does my sassiness upset you?" — signals that women must be unafraid to be confident and assured of themselves. She reinforces this by challenging the expectation of female submission: "Do you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes?" The question form here directly antagonizes those who believe women — especially women of color — should be subservient, making the reader confront that assumption directly.

Literary Form as a Vehicle for Empowerment

Angelou capitalizes on the form of poetry to convey empowerment, using rhythm and rhyme, whereas Cisneros employs the short story to encapsulate the systemic problem of misogyny. In Still I Rise, the following stanza demonstrates a powerful musicality that mirrors its content: "Does my sexiness upset you? / Does it come as a surprise / That I dance like I've got diamonds / At the meeting of my thighs?" The rhyme scheme reinforces the celebratory energy of the lines, connecting sound and meaning. As Higashida (2011) points out, Angelou's popular success is based on her ability to use the universal form of poetry to demonstrate how patriarchy and colonialism share common features in their abuse of power and systematic oppression.

For Cisneros, the choice of the short story is equally deliberate and culturally significant. The storytelling format has traditionally allowed women to hold positions of power within their communities as repositories and transmitters of cultural knowledge (Garcia, 2014). Cisneros thus situates herself within that tradition even as she critiques its contemporary distortions. The following passage captures the irony at the heart of her method: "Was Cleofilas just exaggerating as her husband always said? It seemed the newspapers were full of such stories" (p. 225). Here, Cisneros juxtaposes the traditional oral storytelling form, which preserves cultural identity, with the "stories" in the news about domestic violence — a bitterly ironic contrast.

Conclusion

Multiple forms of literature can convey similar themes related to the intersection of race, gender, and power. Despite their differences in genre, cultural context, and tone, both Cisneros and Angelou use their chosen literary forms to illuminate the experiences of minority women under patriarchy and to advocate for resistance and self-determination. Together, they demonstrate the enduring relevance of intersectional feminist thought in American literature.

References

Angelou, M. (n.d.). Still I rise. Retrieved from https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/still-i-rise

Cisneros, S. (n.d.). Woman hollering creek. Retrieved from

Garcia, A. (2014). Politics and indigenous theory in Leslie Marmon Silko's "Yellow Woman" and Sandra Cisneros's "Woman Hollering Creek." In Folklore, Literature and Cultural Theory. Routledge.

Higashida, C. (2011). Reading Maya Angelou, reading black international feminism today. In Black International Feminism. University of Illinois Press.