In Never Marry a Mexican, Clemencia, Sandra Cisneros' protagonist, begins her narrative by recounting something her mother told her: "never marry a Mexican." In the following sentences she explains the irony by clarifying that she is also Mexican. Clemencia internally struggles to decipher what that four-word advice, which her mother gave her, really means to her as a woman longing for love and as a Mexican longing for a sense of identity. Through her sexuality, which she uses almost like a weapon, we see a woman capable of wounding as a means of protecting herself, of seeking her value. As a result of her mother's advice and her own reaction to the racist environment around her, Clemencia appears to display a toxic, almost internalized, racist view of people of color and what they appear to represent to her, namely the "other" . As a survival mechanism, he seems to detach himself from his own race and try to find his own identity within the white hemisphere to which he does not belong and the brown hemisphere to which he feels he does not belong. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The story begins with a short sentence that reveals an aspect of the root of his internal struggle. Cisneros begins with “never marry a Mexican, my mother said once and always.” By saying “once and always” Clemencia points out that those words were used repeatedly in their family. This is reflected throughout the text when Clemencia reminds the audience of these words repeatedly throughout the text as well. When Clemencia's mother tells her not to marry a Mexican, Clemencia focuses on her own interpretation of those words at the beginning of the next paragraph when she says “I will never marry. Not just any man. This bitter tone already begins to highlight some of the internalization that Clemencia seems to be feeling. For her, in general, no man is good enough for her. We soon discover that for Clemencia, never marrying a “Mexican” means never marrying anyone who isn't white, anyone who is considered “other” in the United States. These flashes of hatred for people of color, for minorities, manifest themselves in the men she chooses to have sex with. Her mother wasn't just the source of her internalized racist view of Mexicans and other people of color, Clemenica explains, “she [her mother] said it because of my father. She said it even though she was Mexican. But she was born here in the United States and he was born there, and it's not the same thing, you know." From the beginning, Clemencia recognizes that part of what makes Mexicans “humble” in her eyes is their status when they arrive to live in the United States, which is reinforced in her mind by her parents' relationship. In the following paragraphs, Clemencia explains how her mother was treated by her father's family as second class "because she's from el otro lado," and making the distinction that "if he had married a white woman from el other lado, that would have been so different state." Clemencia remarks, sarcastically, how ridiculous it was that a Mexican woman couldn't speak Spanish or fold cloth napkins; she finds it ridiculous that her mother was deemed incapable of respect by her in-laws because she was born in a different country. In the story, the differences in how Clemencia's mother and father ate fruit further reinforce Clemencia's perception of her race and later self. Clemencia's mother and grandfather were used to eating watermelons "with their legs wide open in the yard, or in the kitchen squatting on newspapers." The father, however, was used to "at home, in Mexico City, where the servants served watermelon on a plate with cutlery and acloth napkin". In his “mother's house the plates were always stacked in the center of the table, the knives, forks and spoons in a jar”. This is, status-wise, different from his father who wore "shark blue". Suits with the starched pocket handkerchief, the felt hat, the broad-shouldered tweed coat and the heavy English wingtips with the pinhole design on the heel and toe.” These small differences, culturally and status-wise, contribute to the overall unstable relationship between mother and father, which affects how Clemencia views relationships as an adult and how she treats people of her own ethnicity and those outside of his ethnicity. In this sense, Clemencia saw firsthand what her mother was talking about. For Clemencia, the decision to avoid and belittle “others” (minorities like herself) in the United States and, ultimately, her choice not to marry, can be seen as the result of a position of strength, but in reality Clemencia could act in a rebellious way due to the fact of not feeling part of his own species. If Mexican Mexicans belittle Mexicans like Clemencia and her mother, born in “el otro lado,” where does that fit in someone like Clemencia? However, Clemencia did not always disapprove of marriage and this is where we begin to feel sympathy for her. She “wanted to belong to a man… with his toothbrush firmly planted in the toothbrush holder like a flag at the North Pole.” The world around her, including her parents, has made her weary of love, going so far as to chastise herself for uttering the word love: "I did." When her father fell ill with a fatal disease, her mother had met another man who she “saw even while [her] father was ill. Even then." Clemencia explains the extreme shame she feels by saying “even then” about her mother seeing that man while her father was sick. "Once dad was gone, it was as if my mother didn't exist, as if she had died too..." There is a sense of disappointment towards his mother, because when his father died, he that was when they needed her most, but instead she disappeared emotionally. For her, she lost her father physically, and to make matters worse, she lost her mother emotionally. Suddenly, she finds herself alone to deal with her father's death. At the same time, Clemencia blames her father for causing such a separation. Her entire life she has been set up to see her mother be a victim of feeling unworthy in the hands of her father's family. Clemencia may have understood that cultural differences led to her mother's affair and emotional distancing from the family. Most of all, deep down, she may have thought she had to abide by her mother's rules because in her eyes her mother had moved on to another man and that's how she has to deal with the pain too. Structurally, as the narrative progresses from her parents' relationship, there is a pause in the text as she begins to accelerate time towards her relationships. The alienation and state of the relationship with her parents cause Clemenica to be “the other woman” to a man. When Clemencia is seen with a man, it is a man who already has a wife and child. In her description of the man she's having an affair with, she says, "Drew, remember when you called me your Malinalli... 'cause you looked like Cortez with that beard of yours." She's already starting to code this relationship as racial, which seems to turn her on. In the physical description of their sexual relationship, he uses highly sensual language to describe the beauty in the way their skins contrast with each other, his black beard compared to that of the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez. She urges him to continue calling her "Malinalli", referring to a "private game between them"..