Summary
The speaker in the first of these stories (full title: "Anguiano Religious Articles Rosaries Statues Medals Incense Candles Talismans Perfumes Oils Herbs") goes into a religious articles store to get a picture or statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, apparently to offer at a shrine for a very ill friend. The owner insults her when she can't decide what to buy. She says he's headed for hell.
"Little Miracles, Kept Promises" is a collection of 23 notes and letters, some accompanied by objects, left at a shrine (or perhaps several shrines) in a San Antonio church. These are both petitions and notes of thanksgiving, addressed to Christ, St. Mary, and various other saints, and dealing with a variety of human problems from a teenager's pimples to the painful illness of an old gentleman's wife. The final note is preceded by a short monologue in the voice of that note's writer, a young woman who has cut off her hair to signify that she rejects the traditional woman's role in life.
The elderly man who is the speaker in "Los Boxers" is doing his wash in a coin laundry, talking to a woman who is there with her very young daughter. He relates problems with his laundry and talks about his wife, who has died.
The section's title story tells (using third person and an omniscient narrator) of two lonely people, a man and woman, each of whom is paid every two weeks on Fridays. They go on payday to the same bar to drink with their friends, get relatively drunk, go home, and look sadly at the moon. Because they get paid on alternate Fridays, they have never met.
Analysis
This group of stories displays Cisneros' great talent for voice. The reader is introduced to several beautifully sketched characters in a few short pages: the tired middle-aged woman trying to decide how best to spend ten dollars — all the money she has — on a devotional article; the lonely widower talking to a stranger in a laundromat; even the writer of a one-line prayer who has fallen in love with a man not her husband and humbly begs God for help. Each of these stories, sketches, and letters invites us to consider the life of its central character or characters and to participate imaginatively in its fiction.
We must read carefully in order to do so; like much poetry, these pieces are precisely wrought. Although they seem casual, un-self-conscious, even artless (in the sense that they seem to be the unplanned discourse of their speakers), every word in each story counts, adding its deft stroke to the characterization. The exception is "There Was a Man, There Was a Woman," in which the parallel phrases and sentences very artfully delineate the loneliness of these two similar people. And loneliness is the thread that ties all of these stories together, along with human need and the dogged courage of the characters, who face their loneliness and hardships bravely, thankful for whatever they have and determined to make the best of what life has handed them.
Glossary
los amores de la calle literally, "loves of the street"; streetwalkers, hookers.
Te ofrezco este . . . . Adela O. "I offer you this photo of my children. Watch them, dear God, and if you take away the drinking of my son I promise I'll light candles. Help us with our bills, Lord, and that our income tax check may arrive soon so we can pay our bills. Give us a good life and please help our sons to change their ways. You who are so generous, listen to these requests that I ask of you with all my heart and all the faith of my soul. Have pity, my Lord. My name is Adela O.
Thank you por el milagro . . . . Thank you for the miracle of having me graduate from high school. Here I give you a picture of my graduation.
Venimos desde . . . . We come from very far away. Infinite thanks, Lord. Thanks for having listened to us.
ven a saludar come and say hello.
quedar bien make a good impression.
"I wanted you bare-breasted, snakes in your hands . . . ." The speaker, Chayo, is here referring to a famous image of the Mother Goddess from the ancient bronze-age Minoan culture of Crete (c. 3000–c. 1100 b.c.).
