Classical Backgrounds to English Literature

Cherrie Moraga’s The Hungry Woman

Study Questions

• What is the significance of the opening scene of act II for the play as a whole?

• What is the effect of the play’s self-referentiality (i.e., during Chac-Mool’s interrogation by the border patrol)? Why would Moraga have put this sequence in the play?

• Why does Medea kill Chac-Mool? Is this killing any more or less justified than that of Medea’s infanticide in Euripides’s or Seneca’s plays?

• What is the significance of the play’s epilogue?

• Think about this question again in reference to the whole play: What is the significance of the La Llorona myth and the Hungry Woman myth to this play? And what is the relationship of these two myths to each other as well as to the Medea myth? How does Moraga intermingle all three myths to create her own play?