Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use and child death.  

“This is how all days begin and end.”

The Cihuatateo perform the same function as the traditional Greek chorus found in plays like Euripides’s Medea. In ancient Greek drama, the chorus serves as a collective voice, providing commentary, context, and reflections on the action, themes, and moral implications of the play. The day beginning and ending with pronouncements from the collective of women who died in childbirth is a thematic, foreboding reminder of The Universality of Female Suffering in Patriarchal Cultures in the past, present, and future.

“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