Never Marry A Mexican Essay

“Never Marry A Mexican" by Sandra Cisneros is a complex tale of love, race, and identity with the narrator, Clemencia showcasing these themes with contradicting stories and narration, making her an unreliable narrator. The use of an unreliable narrator allows the reader to question the protagonist's perceptions of herself and her relationships, ultimately revealing the destructive effects of internalized racism and self-hatred.

Clemencia desires a white man, and a white man only. This desire is driven by her internalized racism, which causes her to devalue her own Mexican identity and view it as something inferior. She constantly seeks validation from men and uses them as objects of her desire, but not Latinos. In her eyes, Latino’s were

Clemencia wants men to love her, a Mexican, however she cannot bring herself to love someone like her. This inconsistency in her behavior and narration raises questions about her perception and presentation of herself and her relationships, especially in her relationship with Drew. Clemencia's relationship with Drew, is a reflection of her internalized racism. She sees Drew as a symbol of whiteness and power and believes that by being with him, she can escape the perceived limitations of her Mexican identity by gaining approval and love from a white man. However, this belief for assimilation and acceptance ultimately leads to her own self-destructive tendencies and lack of self esteem. “My dark skin against yours. Beautiful, you said. You said I was beautiful, and when you said it, Drew, I was” (4), Clemencia is attaching her own beauty and self-worth to Drew’s perception of her. In her mind, she is beautiful because Drew thinks she is and her dark skin is beautiful because Drew thinks it is. By attaching her beauty and self-worth to Drew's perception of her, Clemencia is allowing external factors to define her sense of self, rather than

Throughout the story, Clemencia portrays herself as superior to Megan, emphasizing her own sexual prowess and power over Drew as a way of asserting her dominance over his wife. Clemencia has feelings of competition and judgment when it comes to Megan's conventional white beauty and femininity. She sees Megan as a kind of embodiment of the traditional white feminine ideal that she herself feels she can never measure up to. Even though she judges Megan for these white ideals, she is resentful that Drew chose Megan and her white beauty standards over her. Because Drew chose this, Clemencia’s self worth about her race is down and she begins to resent the white beauty standards and femininity that Megan represents and she begins to show more self destructive actions. When directing her narration towards the son, Clemencia starts to showcase her destructive tendencies. While just the paragraph before Clemencia was bragging about sleeping with men while their wives were “giving life”, now she is telling a story of what can be considered emotionally charged and impulsive behavior, “Once, drunk on margaritas, I telephoned your father at four in the morning, woke the bitch up”. This suggests that Clemencia is struggling to manage her emotions and may still be seeking validation from Drew. Additionally, the fact that she was drunk suggests that she may have