A single short story can suggest a desired response from the reader. It is a difficult task, though, to create a world within a single short story and then repeat this world again in other stories while maintaining a consistent flow of ideas. Many authors prefer to use the same setting, indeed, often the same characters in each story. Isabel Allende’s Diez Cuentos’ de Eva Luna comes to mind. In these stories, Allende uses the small town of Agua Santa as the setting for the entire collection.

Woman Hollering Creek is a collection of short stories by Sandra Cisneros. Rather than using the same characters or setting throughout the collection, Cisneros takes a different approach to relate her stories to one another. Much of the burden, in fact, is placed on the reader, for the characters change each time, as does the setting. Furthermore, while the characters are largely Mexican American immigrant women, each character presents a distinct style and literary voice. What these works have in common is more intuitive; mood, circumstance, time, tone, and imagery all play a role in creating the world in which the stories take place.

1.)The author of the passage would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements?

(A) Short story collections depend on the reader to find the common thread that ties the stories together.
(B) Isabel Allende uses the same setting for the majority of her fiction.
(C) It is possible to create a coherent short story collection if the stories take place in different times and places.
(D) Intuition is a more important aspect of Sandra Cisneros’s writing than the characters or the setting.
(E) The best short story collections feature some through-line that the reader can follow and that connects the various stories.


2.)According to the passage, which of the following characterizes both short stories by Isabel Allende and short stories by Sandra Cisneros?

(A) Similarities in tone among the stories
(B) Similarities in time among the stories
(C) Similarities in characters among the stories
(D) Similarities in setting among the stories
(E) None of the above