SOURCE: Guerra, Veronica A. “The Silence of the Obejas: Evolution of Voice in Alma Villanueva's ‘Mother, May I’ and Sandra Cisneros's ‘Woman Hollering Creek’.” In Living Chicana Theory, edited by Carla Trujillo, pp. 320-51. Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 1998.

In the following essay, Guerra traces the evolution of voice in Chicana literature through an analysis of “Woman Hollering Creek” and Alma Villanueva's poem “Mother, May I.”

Silenciosa: adj. quiet: person, house, object: noiseless.

Silenciar: v. to muffle, hush up, to cast into oblivion.

So defines and translates the dictionary La Petit Larousse (García, Pelayo y Gross, et al., eds. 1980) the difference between the verb and adjective forms of this word. A derivative of this, “Silenciada” (silenced) forms the past participle form of the verb and can be used both as a participial adjective and as the passive form of the verb in what Noam Chomsky calls the Active...