Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story

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Description

Translated Woman tells the story of an unforgettable encounter between Ruth Behar, a Cuban-American feminist anthropologist, and Esperanza Hernández, a Mexican street peddler. The tale of Esperanza’s peculiar life yields unexpected and profound reflections at the mutual desires that bind together anthropologists and their “subjects.”
When Cuban American anthropologist Ruth Behar tried to piece together the lives led by women in one Mexican village, she didn’t reckon at the stubborn magnetism of Esperanza, who “appeared made up our minds to push her story into my hands and stuff it into my ears, so I could take it back across the border.” Translated Woman is a giddy rush of dramatic words from Esperanza herself talking late into the night about the hardships and triumphs of her life. Having barely fled the wrath of her drunken father, she takes up with a philandering wife-beater who helps to keep her in the Mexican version of purdah, complete with a scolding better half’s mother. Looming starvation and the loss of child after child, which she ascribes to the coraje (rage) her worthless husband riles up in her breast, impels her to leave him. Progressively she carves out enough work as a street peddler to improve herself and her children. Great turns of phrase from Behar and Esperanza enliven this atypical account. Skirting volatile feuds between neighbors, Behar worries lest her research get mired in “a nest of old hatreds.” Says Esperanza of being penniless, “I almost had to use one hand to cover my front and some other hand to cover my back.”

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