Critique of "Never Marry a Mexican"

Sandra Cisneros’s “Never Marry a Mexican” possesses a narrative voice that changes as the story progresses. The first person narrator, Clemencia, who is an American Hispanic, begins by giving a brief sketch of her parents’ relationship before delving into her own relationship with Drew, a white, married man. She becomes obsessed with Drew, and many years later after he ends the affair, she seeks to take revenge on his son, hoping to infatuate and break the boy’s heart just as Drew did to her. Once Clemencia starts talking about her lovers, the story’s structure begins to shift from a standard chronicle of events to a stream of consciousness narrative. For instance, she refers to Drew and his son as “you.” These passages read like a letter to the two men, as though they become the audience instead of the reader. “Your son. Does he know how much I had to do with his birth? I was the one who convinced you to let him be born.” This technique illustrates her obsession with Drew, which becomes more intense as the story unfolds. “I haven’t stopped dreaming you. Did you know that? Do you think it’s strange? I never tell, though. I keep it to myself like I do all the thoughts I think of you.”

            Additionally, as the story draws to the end, Clemencia begins to shift back and forth between her addressees to the point where it becomes unclear who she is talking to.

“Oh, love, there. I’ve gone and done it…And you’ve answered the phone, and startled me away like a bird. And now you’re probably swearing under your breath and going back to sleep, with that wife beside you, warm, radiating her own heat, alive under the flannel and down and smelling a bit like milk and hand cream, and that smell familiar and dear to you, oh.”

Her talk of the phone and a wife is suggestive of Drew, yet the words “startled me away like a bird” and “milk” allude to the son. This ambiguity suggests that she is falling deeper into her obsession, and just as the reader has difficulty following her, so does she lose grip on reality. Thus, the fluctuations in the narrative work to underscore the mental instability of the narrator.