The Hungry Woman

“I live inside the prison of my teeth.”

After killing her son, Medea is locked inside a psychiatric ward. This is, in effect, a prison. However, the much more real prison—as she acknowledges—is the one that is inside her. Using a metaphor, she explains that her body itself has become a prison, with her teeth as the bars. She cannot escape the trauma any more than she can escape her body.

“One year earlier. The land of the exiled. Phoenix, Arizona.”

The Cihuatateo again perform a narrative function like that of the Greek chorus. As well as elucidating the themes and symbols of the play, the Cihuatateo provide chronological signposting to help the audience navigate the narrative. Scenes are split between the past and the present, with the prison guard/Cihuatateo North teaching the audience that they, like Medea, must now relive and relitigate these painful memories in the present.

“I don’t trust myself. I feel my hands as liquid as the river.”

Medea is a midwife. Due to her recent increase in alcohol consumption, driven by difficult interactions with her ex-husband, she does not trust herself to help birth babies. She fears her own shaking hands, but she is self-aware enough not to harm others with her struggles. The line is an ominous foreboding of what will occur later in the play when Medea kills her own child. The barriers that hold her back from harming others are dismantled over the course of the play.

“I don’t remember if this is the right way to pray. I was never officially taught.”

Chac-Mool loves his mother and Luna. They have raised him in exile, meaning that he is one of the only characters in the play to be raised in a fully matriarchal community rather than the patriarchal communities of the old societies. Despite the affection he feels for Medea and Luna, Chac-Mool feels instinctively that there is something missing from his education. He seeks to find this out for himself, a desire which eventually pushes him closer to his father, with tragic consequences.

“She didn’t do nothing. Mom. I asked her to teach me.”

Much to Medea’s annoyance, Luna teaches Chac-Mool about historic maize cultivation as practiced by their ancestors. This agricultural technique is intended to teach Chac-Mool about his heritage, but in raising her son, Medea hopes to achieve a complete break from the brutal, traumatizing past that has hurt her so badly. Medea is annoyed at Luna, but Chac-Mool reveals that he sought out Luna’s guidance. He wants to learn about his heritage to deepen his understanding of his own identity, and his mother’s attempts to block this learning foreshadow his urge to reunite with his father.

“Well, why would you name me like that, for someone who didn’t win?”

In the time leading up to his death, Chac-Mool finally asks his mother why she chose his name. Chac-Mool is a curious young man, eager to know his true self, but his mother seems almost afraid of allowing him to reach such an understanding. She remembers the young boy and fears the man he might become, so holding him back and withholding certain aspects of his identity are a way to maintain his childhood naivete and innocence.

“I want a wife, Medea. It’s not natural!”

In the flashback to the argument that ended the marriage, Jasón reveals how he thinks of his wife as a commodity that he owns. Medea is a bisexual woman; her queer identity does not conform to Jasón’s expectations of how the world should function. The exclamation, “It’s not natural!” reveals his reactionary understanding of sexuality and gender relations: He views patriarchal, heteronormative social arrangements as the natural order of things and everything else as a violation of that order.

“I got all my sculpting stuff down here, locked up in that cupboard.”

Luna is a sculptor, but even after many years in exile, she has not returned to sculpting. This is a fundamental part of her identity, but she keeps her tools locked away inside a cupboard to please Medea. This foreshadows the way in which Medea and Luna both withhold certain parts of their true selves from the other, creating a rift between them which will end tragically.

“Don’t make a mother choose between blood and love.”

Mama Sal is Chac-Mool’s great-grandmother. She has seen and experienced a great deal in life, giving her a wisdom beyond the scope of many of the other characters. She warns her great-grandson about forcing his mother to make a choice, correctly predicting that Medea will not react well. Mama Sal’s prophetic wisdom goes unheeded, and Chac-Mool is killed by Medea as a result.

“We might as well be back all closeted-up like Mama Sal’s stories of ‘the life’ half-century ago.”

Mama Sal is much older than the other women in the play. Her experience includes a time when LGBTQ+ people had to hide their sexuality from mainstream society. Luna and Medea may have been driven into exile, but Mama Sal’s experience of her sexuality includes being driven into a deeper exile inside her own society, denying her very existence. As such, she serves as a keeper of generational memory for her community.

“Chac-Mool is our measuring stick, like the pencil scratches on the kitchen wall, marking out our time together.”

Chac-Mool is raised by Medea and Luna in exile. To them, his growth is a physical illustration of their time together. Each extra inch he grows represents months and years of their relationship. This metaphor—which frames Chac-Mool as an instrument whose purpose is to measure the lives of his parents—foreshadows Chac-Mool’s growing desire to forge his own identity.

“You know lesbianism is a lot like virginity, you can’t recycle it.”

Luna urges Medea to accept her identity as a lesbian. She cannot understand why Medea would still entertain any notion of heterosexuality, given the degree to which men like Jasón treat women as property. Through her comments, however, Luna reveals that she simply does not comprehend or accept Medea’s identity as a bisexual woman. Ironically, Luna is projecting an identity onto Medea, just as she accuses Jasón of doing.

“You’re not a lesbian, Medea, for chrissake. This is a masquerade.”

Jasón explicitly refuses to acknowledge Medea’s sexuality. Whereas Luna urged Medea to accept a lesbian identity from a place of compassion and empathy, Jasón’s reasoning is more insular and selfish. He does not want to entertain the belief that an LGBTQ+ person could be attracted to him, or he to them. To Jasón, Medea’s bisexuality is a threat to his own identity and status. He diminishes Medea and her identity to little more than an extension of himself and, in doing so, denies her humanity and agency.

“Pero, Huitzilopotchli, that’s him, el diosito inside Coatlicue, he ain’t gonna punk out on his mami.”

This line from the Cihuatateo East is one of the most pronounced examples of the play’s blending of cultures through language. The line contains references to Aztec gods, a mix between Spanish and English, and a markedly less formal tone than most of the play, veering into slang. Even within a single sentence, the play crosses numerous registers and cultural codes, creating an inflection point of cultural identity through language choices.

“She’s been walking around in a funk all day. The girlfriend didn’t come.”

Medea is placed in the psychiatric hospital after murdering her child. Though she loved Chac-Mool, Luna still visits Medea. During these visits, Medea says nothing, but her notable reaction to Luna’s non-arrival indicates that she places some importance on the visits. Medea may not be able to bring herself to speak to Luna or to seek forgiveness for what she did, but Luna’s visits imply that this forgiveness may one day be possible. Medea needs this possibility, and when the possibility is withheld, her reaction is noticed by those around her.

“I’m almost fifty. I’m tired of fighting. I wanna go home.”

Medea’s melancholic admission to her son alludes to the tragedy of her character. She fought for a revolution, only to have the revolution betray her. She has been fighting her entire life to be accepted for who she is, against the old orthodoxy and the new orthodoxy. Now, she is simply exhausted. She no longer wants to fight for herself, only for her son. She has begun to entertain surrender.

“You hate men. And boys become men.”

Jasón’s pronouncement is particularly striking for Medea because it contains an element of truth. Medea loathes the patriarchal systems that have traumatized her; Jasón flattens this nuance to encompass all men. Medea fears that her son will grow up to perpetuate the same misogynistic ideas, rather than simply grow up to be a man, but Jasón is correct to say that Medea fears that Chac-Mool will grow up to be like every other man she has known.

“For the record, I hate that name. It’s a Nazi name.”

Chac-Mool’s father tried to name his son Adolfo, but Chac-Mool rejects his father’s name. He may be interested in what his father has to say about masculine identity, but Chac-Mool’s decision to self-identify with the traditional name given to him by his mother demonstrates that he favors her worldview over that of his father. The rejection of the “Nazi name” is an explicit decision by Chac-Mool to choose his mother over his father.

“You don’t have the courage to be alone. You’ll flop from woman to woman for the rest of your life.”

By the time Medea makes this accusation, Luna is already in a relationship with Savannah. As revealed by the play’s nonlinear structure, Luna will continue to visit Medea in the psychiatric hospital. Medea’s words are prophetic: Luna will always define herself in relation to the women around her. Whereas Medea means this as an insult, Luna accepts it as a fundamental part of her identity. The distance between the implication and the inference illustrates the tension between the two characters.

“If I don’t get back there, you don’t let them bury me here, eh?”

Chac-Mool is shocked by Mama Sal’s request that she not be laid to rest in Phoenix, where she and other women have built a community for themselves. Her request is an admission that she does not belong to this new world. She feels like a relic of the past who has endured through a rapidly changing present. In the future, she would like to be returned to the past.

“They’re all lines, mijito. Rehearsed generations in advance and transmitted into your little male DNA.”

Chac-Mool admits that he has begun the process to visit his father. This admission is much more significant for Medea, who sees her son’s words as a sign that he will eventually embrace the patriarchal violence that has traumatized her in many ways. Speaking metaphorically, Medea suggests that this violence is built into her son’s genes, no matter how much she hates to admit it. This foreshadows her decision to kill her son, fearing what he may (she feels) inevitably become. Her use of the Spanish-language colloquialism “mijito” (my little son) evokes the connections between family, identity, and love.

“I love you, Mom.”

Medea wrestles with many different identities throughout the play, but to Chac-Mool, she will only have one identity that matters: mother. He addresses her as such, even as she plots his death. For Medea, this is the one identity that ultimately matters more than most and which she feels she cannot betray.

“Don’t say anything more, hijo.”

Medea’s last words to her son are a plea for silence. There is nothing left for him to say to her; the poison has been consumed, and his fate has been set in motion. Medea wants the silence to reflect on what she has sacrificed: her son and her freedom in opposition to the patriarchy. There are no words left to say, especially as Medea does not believe that anyone can change her mind.