One Holy Night (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Sandra Cisneros
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The twentieth century
- Setting: Somewhere in the United States and Mexico
- Principal Characters: The unnamed narrator, Chato, Abuelita
- Genres: Social realism, Short fiction
- Subjects: Girls, United States or Americans, Adolescence, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Pregnancy, Grandparents or grandchildren, Mexico or Mexicans, Latinos, Mass murderers or serial killers
- Locales: United States, Mexico
The Story
The narrator has been sent to a dusty town in Mexico to live with her cousins. She describes her lover, Chaq Uxmal Paloquin, who claims to be descended from Mayan kings, and explains that her grandmother, Abuelita, has burned her pushcart and chased Chaq away with a broom. The narrator met Chaq while selling cucumbers and other produce from a pushcart in front of a food store in the United States. She explains that she was not the first to go bad in this way; her mother also “took the crooked walk.” She struggles to describe her feelings for Chaq, seeing him as...
[The entire page is 1394 words long]
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