Response A partial remembrance of a Puerto Rican childhood

1.    Why are the cuentos in Cofer’s memoir particulary women’s stories? What would be the equivalent of these cuentos for the boys in the family? Who would tell them?

Because the enviroment she was raised in was listening to her mother and the other adult women sitting around telling there stories of the men around there and what they did. The stories she told of some of the things men would come to the town with intensions of doing. They told of men who would come to town get a job with no intention of staying in that location. They didn’t take it seriously and were only there to seduce the women and basically show every intention of marring the and then just dissappering. It was not uncommon for a man to have two or three families around the island.

I am not totally sure about this because of my lack of being able to understand the word cuentos. But, the way I would imagine it is much like for the girls through the tellings of the males in the family. I believe the stories would be passed down much in the same fashion as for the girls. My personal feelings on it are things were really unfair for the girls. The guys really didn’t care about the effects of what they did to the women. They talked about arrangements of pre determination for the smart and beautiful girls. That seems like a really unfair and inconsiderate arrangement to be involved in. Maybe you have to be in there culture to understand.