A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood
The cuentos are mainly women's stories to warn them against men and how terrible they can be. I think the older women have seen the way men treat women, kind of like they are just there for sex. The women tell these stories because they don't want the younger women to get hurt by men. Back in those days, the younger female children were allowed to listen to the stories because they married younger.
I believe if the stories had been told by men, they would have been about the old nagging women. They would tell the boys or younger men to be careful who they marry so they wouldn't end up with the ones that complained and yelled all the time. I think the stories would be told by the older men that no longer worked, and were stuck listening to the older women tell their stories.
I don't remember any stories that were told by family members in my family. But I think that if I had heard any it would have been about the same as the ones the Cofer women told. They would be about how you shouldn't give yourself to any man unless you are married to them, because if you do they won't stick around most times. My family was not the kind of family to sit around telling stories though. We only got together with family around the holidays, and then it wasn't much about stories. Mostly they just caught up on everyone's busy lives.
Hi Cristina,
ReplyDeleteYou tell us how men might tell cautionary tales like the women. What might be interesting to explore is the setting of these cautionary tales that men might tell.
Do you recall your grandmother or grandfather telling you stories as a younger child?
Ms. C
I think the men would be sitting outside under a tree in those same kinds of rockers the women sat in, smoking pipes and telling stories about the nagging women. I really think it would be funny to listen to.
ReplyDeleteI do not recall ever hearing my grandparents telling any stories when I was young. Maybe I didn't pay enough attention back then. But we only saw the grandparents in the summer for two weeks and so we were busy playing with the cousins.