The vignette that made the strongest impression on me was “A Smart Cookie” on Page 90. This vignette shows Esperanza’s mother thinking back to her past and how she could have been something more compared to her present self. She tells her daughter Esperanza to stay in school and study since she doesn’t want her daughter to end up like her who is disgusted with the reason she didn’t stay in school. This made the strongest impression on me because while I don’t have as much experience compared to Esperanza’s mother I sometimes also think back and think that I could have done better in certain things. I also hope that I do not end up like the mother in the future who regrets not taking action in the past due to feeling shame or that I am not good enough to do something for whatever reason I made up back then.
Daily Archives: December 9, 2022
Which one of the vignettes from pages 56 – 109 of The House on Mango Street made the strongest impression on you? In a post of at least 150 words, identify the vignette and discuss its theme or central idea, explaining why it resonated for you. As with last week, please do not discuss the same vignette someone else has discussed, if possible. For this one, I picked “Linoleum Roses”. The name first caught my eye since roses are my favorite flowers. Reading the vignette I realized how similar it is to stories we had before ( think “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates) where both girls try to escape their lives but end up in a worst/ similar situation as before. Sally married really young to escape her life, ” She said she is in love but she did it to escape.” Similar to modern times especially in NYC, a lot of people stay with their partners simply because they cannot afford rent on their own. Sally sits at home and is not allowed to talk to her friends and is afraid to go out without her husband’s permission, she traded her prison for an entirely new prison and realized that her life has not changed for the best but for the worst. Her husband shows abusive and controlling tendencies and the fact that her husband has already broken a door because he got angry is a red flag and a sign of more abusive behavior that might spiral.
The chapter “Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut & Papaya Juice on Tuesdays” describes a young neighbor whose husband locks her in their apartment when he goes out to play dominoes on Tuesday nights. Rafaela wishes she could dance in the bar where she hears the music wafting up to her window. She asks the children to buy her sweet drinks at the store as a treat, so she drops down a dollar, and they send up a bottle of juice on a paper bag pulley. Then “Sally” is about a neighbor girl who also feels trapped inside her house by her father who worries because she is too beautiful. People spread rumors about her, which are untrue, so she stands alone by the fence pretending she was invisible, dreaming about a life where she felt loved. “Minerva Writes Poems” is about another neighbor who has two children, and her husband keeps leaving and coming back. Minerva struggles to feed her children and writes poems in her free time. It’s hard to say if it’s worse when her husband is there and beats her or worse when he’s away. In “Bums in the Attic” Esperanza wishes she could live in a house on a hill, so she could be closer to the stars. She would let homeless men sleep in her attic, and she would be happy. Even though Esperanza knows she is the ugly daughter, in “Beautiful & Cruel” she thinks about how she will someday escape her parents’ house. She knows she can’t use her sexuality to attract a man, so instead she tries to act like a man.
In my continued reading of “The House on Mango Street”, I found that the vignette “What Sally Said” resonated with me the most. The theme of this chapter is child abuse, and the subject of this abuse is Esperanza’s friend, Sally. In the Vignette “Sally” we are introduced to the title character. Sally is described as a raven-haired girl whom all the boys think is beautiful and is Esperanza’s only friend. We also learn that Sally comes from a very religious home. Esperanza informs the reader that Sally displays two different personalities. When Sally is at school, she is outgoing, she paints her eyelids in the style of Cleopatra. But, after school, she removes the blue eyeliner she wears, pulls her skirt down, and no longer laughs; Like Connie in ‘Where are you going, where have you been” by Carol Oates. In “What Sally said” We learn that she is physically abused at home by her father. We also learn that her mother does not stop the abuse. Sally bares bruises caused by the beatings and covers for her father stating they are due to falls and other mishaps. The reason this chapter resonated with me is that when I was in junior high school, I had a friend named Jamal. Jamal transferred into the school in the middle of seventh grade. One day he came to school with a black eye. Jamal told everyone he got the injury from running into a door. Another time, he said the burn on his hand was because he touched the radiator when it was on. Then one day, Jamal didn’t come back to school. Sometime later we had an assembly where the staff played videos that spoke about abuse, explaining what it is and the different kinds from verbal to physical and […]
The vignette that made the strongest impression on me is “A House of My Own”. The central idea of this vignette is essentially about owning a house living by yourself without having to worry about cleaning up after someone else living there and being in a quiet peaceful clean space with no interruptions. The theme of this vignette is coming of age as for why it resonates with me it’s because one day I want to be able experience the same thing
“Papa who wakes up in the dark” Honestly hit me hardest. I’ve experienced that kind grief when my mom passed away. It was surreal. One of my mom’s friends witnessed her suddenly fall to the ground and went to tell my dad. She had fell due to an epileptic episode. Everything that happened between my dad trying to wake her up while waiting for the ambulance to being in the hospital feeling everything from uncertainty, despair to confusion and just numbness. It was surreal and it was weird. I recall going to the bathroom and began to break down in tears while entering a fury just punching the bathroom stalls. What added to this pain was seeing my father cry. Never in my life I’ve seen him breakdown. He was always calm and stoic and to see him in that state brought immense sadness and fear. I felt guilty even though its nobody’s fault but I just didn’t know how to cope with it. It felt like we were all on a bus ride together and suddenly the bus stops and the driver tells me and my dad to get off and the driver leaves us stranded.
The vignette I chose for this discussion is “Beautiful & Cruel”, as the courses of time the definition and gender roles of women have become less strict and less attainable to the male gaze and desire. Some women still carry the traditional habits and thinking of what a women, wife and mother should be and try to project that onto their children or other women. Just like Esperanza’s mother who says “her dusty hair will settle and her blouse will learn to stay clean” but Esperanza is coming into her womanhood and denying that stereotype of being like the “others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.” By “threshold” and “ball and chain” I think Esperanza was stating that most women wait for new stages in their life to begin which mostly means the awaiting of men and marriage. She states she will act like a man and not conform to traditional women ways and doing things her and on her own time, which men have the freedom to experience without judgement.
No speak English on page 76 resonated the most with me because my grandparents came to America not really knowing English and my grandpa still to this day has broken English and is still judged for it because many people have the ignorant belief of that if you’re in America you have to speak English, which is just not true as this country was built by immigrants and should be more welcoming to immigrants not to mention that my grandparents created many jobs as my grandpa owned a store in Brooklyn where he sold a lot of items and was very well loved throughout his community. He was so well loved that he would even have protection from the locals if anyone tried to mess with him or tried to rob the store it just goes to show that even if you may not know the language everyone deserves to be respected and cared about because they’re people at the end of the day that can bring something to the table no matter what.
The vignette from The House on Mango Street that made the strongest impression on me is Sire. I think this vignette is about self-confidence, jealousy, and passion. I loved this vignette because I can relate to young Esperanza whos growing and starting to have love feelings, which is beautiful. The description reminds me of when I was younger. It started with her seeing Sire looking at her and the confidence that she had to look back! I wish I had this confidence as a young girl. Then we can see how jealous she is of his girlfriend, Lois, even though she didn’t say it explicitly. We can understand it by the way she’s scanning her, watching Sire and Lois together, and trying to compare them both (Esperanza and Lois) saying how Lois cannot tie her own shoes while she can. She fantasizes about a boy, not a specific one but she just feels as if she’s ready for something like this, to be an adult and not a child who “every evening talking to the trees”.
The vignette that stood out and left the biggest impression is ” Rafaela who drinks coconut and papaya juice on Tuesdays.” Although the book so far is relatable in a lot of ways, this part of the story triggers memories of my own childhood and my own inner-city “Rapunzel’s.” The description resonates with my own childhood. The visual of Rafaela hanging by the window day dreaming about the life she wishes she could have. Those kids downstairs waiting for her to appear at her window, can feel like a fun routine to look forward to every Tuesday. But for Rafaela its her little moment of psuedo freedom. As I got older, I realized my mom was one them. It almost feels like I was reading a memory of mine. Rafaela was a beautiful woman and desired the life she knew beautiful young women could have. Instead she ended up with an insecure man who kept her locked away. It feels like a small part of the story but it had a big impact on me because it helps pull together all the relatable moments the explained the experience of growing up on mango street, almost like growing up in my own neighborhood.
