CCO
Which one of the vignettes from pages 3 – 53 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. Please do not discuss the same vignette someone else has discussed, if possible.
Please be sure to include your section number at the end of your response. There are 3 sections of students in our big discussion group!
Also, address comments to others by name so we can all follow along.
99 thoughts on “Week 15 Discussion”
“Gil’s Furniture Bought & Sold” (p. 19-20)
This is the third time I have read Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street” – as Professor Conway noted, it is a well-known example of a bildungsroman, a form of literary genre that features a character’s psychological maturation. In the first half of the story, we are introduced to Esperanza and her series of childhood confrontations with life and morality, narrated from the eye and speak of a young girl. Moments of maturation become more pronounced as we near the end of the first section, reflecting Esperanza’s transition from childhood into adolescence (most abruptly felt in the last two vignettes – “Hips” and “The First Job”). In the vignette “Gil’s Furniture Bought & Sold,” Cisneros introduces the idea of the “other” that exists in life – or, that which is distinctly different or unknown to our own perceptions and experiences.
The idea of the “other” resonates with me because on a philosophical level, individuals require the “other” in order to identify conceptions of “self,” “same,” and “us” – which, among other things, becomes that which allows people and societies to connect through universal senses of being and belonging. (*cough cough* my final essay is basically an argument derived from this premise – I can add to that if anyone chooses to ask me about it)
At first, the “other” presents itself through the immediate and physical: contrary to Esperanza’s life at the ‘house on Mango Street,’ the reader enters “a junk store” that seems (allow me to pause right here) not “small” – its “skinny aisles” of “rows and rows of refrigerators” allow Esperanza and Nenny to “look and see all kinds of things” in a darkness “you can get lost easy” in (19). Gil, the “old man [that] owns it,” is himself a figure in juxtaposition from Esperanza and Nenny: his age (he is only described as “old” – to a child, that could really mean anything), his wisdom (Gil’s “gold glasses floating in the dark” contrasting Esperanza’s “who is stupider” moment between herself and Nenny), and his race (I’m confident Gil is the only “black man” in the entire novella) (19-20). Differing from Esperanza’s conception of a “music box” (it “means a pretty box”), this particular “wood box” does “all sorts of things” which Esperanza can’t sensibly articulate, exposing herself to something beyond just the usual box “with flowers painted on it, with a ballerina inside” (20). Unlike anything Esperanza might have ever heard, she describes the music like “drops of water,” or “marimbas…like if you were running your fingers across the teeth of a metal comb” (20).
However, all of this was really to reach the final point; opposite from the title of the vignette, we knew that Gil wasn’t going to be doing much buying and selling given that Esperanza and Nenny don’t have money to do anything other than peruse in the dark. What a reader, in their first time, might not gather until the end of vignette is that Gil had in effect demonstrated one of the first life lessons that most people in some way come to realize: that money not only can’t buy everything, but that its monetary value is meaningless to things meant to be intrinsically valuable in life.
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Hi David,
I enjoy reading your posts each week. I agree that we learn as much about Esperanza through her telling and description of others as we do about the person or object she is describing. When she describes herself turning away so that Gil cannot see how intrigued she is by the box, it shows how closely guarded she keeps her thoughts and desires and believes that Nenny is stupid for not doing so. Nenny is younger and as a result has less guile, she also has an older sister to look out for her and as such doesn’t have as much responsibility.
Your last point, about Gil demonstrating that money can’t buy everything especially resonates. It reminds me of street art I saw a year or so ago that has really stuck with me. It said “some people are so poor, the only thing they have is money”
Ashley
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Hi Ashley,
I can’t help but to take your comment on my posts as a compliment – thank you kindly. I agree with your idea of “guarding” – how many of us have experience with “walls” that we build in ourselves to “protect” us from the “outsiders” ( Prof – wink wink 🙂 ) in our lives? Countless right? The point I wished to make – at least, insofar as its relevancy to the story – was that the “Gil” chapter is the moment which Esperanza (inevitably) comes to realize that the world is filled with those that are simply “not us”. And this isn’t limited to people (For ex, I mention that Gil is the only black man in the novel), but that it includes our environments – the darkness of the store, filled with rows of useless bulky appliances, contrasts the outside – by which everything that takes place in Esperanza’s life (up to this point at least) manifests itself in. For a child, this could be felt and interpreted in so many ways – even for many adults (arguably all), the size and scope of the world is filled with an uncertainty that leaves us quite removed from our sense of “reality” and our place within it.
Thanks again Ashley,
David
This is my first time reading the vignettes from The House on Mango Street. I love the writing style and the way the reader feels closely connected to the protagonist. From the beginning of the story, we sense a feeling of misidentify coming from our protagonist Esperanza. She is shy of her name and this theme of identity reoccurs several times. I decided to write about “Our Good Day”. In this vignette, we are introduced to two new characters, Lucy and Rachel. They offered Esperanza a life time of friendship for $5 to buy a bike. So desperate to find friends and fit in, Esperanza take some money from her little sister to buy the bike. When asked what her name was, as usual Esperanza was embarrassed and wished it to be Cassandra or Alexis, but found that Lucy and Rachel didn’t react to her real name. This approval although so naïve, gives the reader a feeling that Esperanza has at last found her place within the community. Although the first intention was just to get Esperanza’s money, the approval of her name by Lucy and Rachel was a feeling she never felt before.
I feel that there are so many kids in this situation and share a theme of lack of identity. This is very common within immigrant families and communities that are intermixed with other cultures and upbringings. Although very simple and childish, this passage brought a slight smile to my face, knowing that Esperanza does not need to be ashamed of her beautiful name.
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Hello David,
This was also my first time reading in the vignette form. I truly enjoyed the writing style and the story felt like I was putting a puzzle together. I also like the vignette “Our Good Day” It reminds me of when my friends and I would try together as much money as possible to buy fireworks. Every new year my brother and I would go around the neighborhood asking all the other kids if they had money so they could join us in bringing in the new year. This tradition was called Año Viejo and it was a great way to make new friends.
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David, I know exactly what you mean about how close we feel so quickly to the narrator of this story. I think it’s because the language is so direct, so honestly childlike and imbued with impressions we can all remember from our own experience of childhood. I like “Our Good Day” too. The title is exactly how a child would describe a day like this when she makes new friends, is accepted, and ends up on a wild, happy bicycle ride.
Hello David, I same as you, this was my first time reading the “The House of Mango Street”. The vignette “Our Good Day” for me is having fun with my best friend that we meet in high school. Because my academic performance is different from theirs, but they never despise me. Also, I cherish them very much and I am fortunate to recognize them. Until today, we still keep in touch we each other although we are not studying in a university.
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Hello David. it is interesting that you caught on to the aspect of Esperanza’s name being brought up through multiple of the vignettes thus far. This sensitivity of her name that you mention reminds me of “Names, Nombres” by Julia Alvarez from one of the previous weeks readings. The aspect of one self conscious about their name which is used to dignify their heritage and culture is prevalent in both stories. Identity seems to be a running theme within this semester.
Richard, as always, I love when students refer back to previous readings, so I’m very happy to see your comments about “Names/Nombres.” Yay!
Having previously read Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street” in my sophomore year high school class, I know what the author is going for as a whole through the text. However, I approached this rereading with the hope to uncover something new in the text that went over my head four years ago. This approach proved to be constructive as the vignette entitled “Hips”. Within this vignette, Esperanza along with Rachel, Lucy and Nenny, discuss hips and the way in which they suddenly become prominent in a woman’s figure overnight. This is juxtaposed with the four characters jumping rope and creating rhymes regarding the topic while doing the activity. I see this juxtaposition being used in the vignette as the topic of the girls growing up and as a result their bodies begin to develop. The juxtaposition of it comes in as they are doing the activity of jumping rope while coming up with rhymes which is usually done by children. Therefore, the concept of adulthood is soon to become important in their lives as they will soon experience it, however at that moment in which they are discussing one of the aspects of it, they are still children at heart.
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Richard, so you had a new appreciation of the story “Hips” during this later reading? I don’t think most high school boys give too much thought about how girls might feel about their changing bodies—though they give a huge amount of thought to those bodies themselves. I don’t know how old you are now, but I’m guessing that you have a greater sensitivity when you read the vignettes at this point.
Hello Richard James Proano, I also liked the vignette “Hips”, it seems to me tender and childish and it reminded me of when I was a teenager. The girls are discussing different opinions about the hips that at that age were already changing. Their bodies were in flux but they were still girls inside. The mental process is always slower than the phase change. The mind needs more time to accept the changes.
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I have truly enjoyed reading this story for the first time. Reading this was very nostalgic for me it was hard to pick one vignette. The overall theme of the story is very nostalgic, the narrator looks back in time reflecting on her youth. Very much like a coming of age story, the narrator looks back in time to reflect on who she is.
First, I will discuss “Laughter” “Nenny and I don’t look like sisters… not right away.” My brother and I do not look alike at all and we always find little things to remind us of Ecuador. My brother Steven is very white, and I am very tan. My family’s genes are very wild. Our family parties look like some sort of reunion for foster families because we all look so different. My family consists of very white looking people to strong Latin genes. The only way to tell we are bothers is the way we talk and the way we laugh.
Chanclas “Now uncle Nacho is coming in his car and we have to hurry to get to Precious Blood Church quick because that’s where the baptism party is, in the basement rented for today for dancing and tamales and everyone’s kids running all over the place.” I hated the dreadful after church basement parties. When we first moved to Connecticut, my mother brother and I would go to a Spanish-speaking church. It was a small tightknit community who enjoyed coming of age church celebrations, things like first communions, baptism, and Quinceañeras. All special events were in the basement of the church. The celebrations always had amazing food dancing and of course, children crying. The worst was when the adults would force the boys and girls to dance with each other or when a random adult you never meet before would drag you to the dancefloor. As you would expect my brother and I got tired of this and we made a plan to convince mom to go to the English-speaking church near our house because she needed to practice her English. The real reason was that the mass was much shorter, and they did not have a basement.
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Hey Kevin, you’re comment was very interesting because I also have family members in my family that doesn’t look exactly the same like me, but we might also share the same common things or sometimes we don’t. You saying you’re family gatherings looks like foster families party is really funny because my family is exactly the same way, it’s very interesting to me though to connect with my family that doesn’t look exactly like me and share our thoughts and opinion, because although we may look different we share the same blood.
In the story of “The House of Mango Street”, the vignettes that made the strongest impression on me is “Those Who Don’t” because I have the same when I move to a new house or when I just immigrated to the United States. At that time, my new neighbors felt all fear and fear of contact. But a few days later, I found out that it was my fault, because the feeling they gave me completely changed, they are friendly and helpful. The vignettes in “The House of Mango Street” is “They think we’re dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives”. It mean prejudice between people and feeling dangerous about new things or people. The central idea is people should always maintain a sense of crisis for everything. Only in this way can we be more vigilant. But don’t ignore the good things around you and cause the loss of friends or family. People should put away pride and prejudice. Only in this way will it blend into other groups.
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Hello Mei Yan,
I agree with you that when you move to the United States, you will experience a difference between the interaction you will have with your neighbor. It can be either in a good way or a bad way, but as you said, sometimes it can be your fault as well in the way the relationship goes. Sometimes pride and prejudice influence us a lot. However as you mentioned we should put that away in other to be fair, and live with other in a better way.
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Hi Mei, I think everyone’s moving experience to the United States was very difficult. Difficult to connect with your neighbors and difficult in school, but we somehow made a way and tried to communicate with people. I found out that a friendly smile on your face brings a lot of conversation and people together. It’s not our fault that we’re unsure on who to trust and to be uptight about. Society makes it that way sometimes also.
Hey Mei Yan,
I enjoyed reading your post and liked reading “Those Who Don’t” as well. I feel that you can first hand relate with this story based on what you wrote in your post and getting to know you a little throughout the semester. I find it very important to read stories like “The House on Mango Street” in such diverse and international schools like BMCC. It is even more important to let the class share their opinion and reviews, as it gives us a perspective that is likely different from our own. Thank you for sharing your experience.
David, I share your sentiments about the diversity of BMCC and for me the discussion boards are the most interesting and vital part of the course (aside from the great literature, of course).
Mei Yan, thank you for this personal response to “Those Who Don’t” with its memory of your first days as an immigrant in the U.S. I’m so struck by your willingness to also look at yourself in the face of what you perceive as prejudice to realize that maybe you were giving impressions to them that you didn’t mean to. Maybe your own fear was making them fearful. Immigrants become such large people. I don’t mean that in terms of literal size.I mean that they are forced to grow and expand their perspectives so much more than those who never face the great upheaval of moving to another country.
I loved reading the vignettes from the house on Mango street it is very easy to understand and follow along with the story.
The vignette I am going to comment on is “Hairs”, in this reading it seems everything is not the same or their lives are not stable, there are a lot of differences between them and others but also many differences between the members of the family itself. ” Everybody in our family has different hair”. It is very usual that members of the same family be different in many ways in their physical appearances, or have completely different behavior. But in this family, it looks like they have all different hairs from each other, however, she seems to appreciate more her mother’s hair than anyone less, the way it looks, and the way it smells also. I have the same situation, siblings being different from each other, but in our case, it about the skin color my mother and my father have completely different skin color, now with my siblings and I, we look very different because of that.
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Souadou, yes, “Hairs” is a very wonderful and intimate exploration of the physical differences even in one family. My whole family has terrible hair. Thank goodness because if one of my sisters had lush, thick hair, I’d be jealous!
Hey souadou,
I also picked the “Hairs” vignette because I can really relate to it. Growing up I loved my moms hair more than my own and I still feel this way now even as I’m older. I also agree with the fact that in families everyone is so different and that is so very common, and that this vignette really expresses the various differences of one family as well as others. I can also relate to your personal situation because I had felt the same at some point in regards to my mom’s skin color compared to my own.
Reading the story “ The house on mango street” it gives me an imagery of a very peaceful neighborhood. The Narrator gives intel on their family and the struggling situation their experiencing living inside an old house that had a lot of problems. The imagery gives a sense of struggle from Esperanza and her family hustling to make it. “Girl’s Furniture Bought and sold. This story give more intel about the family living situation. “He doesn’t turn the the light on unless you got money to buy things with, so in dark we look and see all kinds of things, with.” The junk store where they once bought furniture from isn’t open to selling anyone anything unless they have money, then the light will be on for purchase to be made, the narrator stated that her and Nenny looked through the window in the dark initiating the lack of money the didn’t had to make any purchases. This part of the story focuses on Esperanza and nenny — who’s trying to make the best out of the amount of money they have in a old junk store. Nenny who tried purchasing a box that the narrator wasn’t clearly intrigued by went out of her way to ask the old man the price to find out in wasn’t up for sale. I think the story overall gives an insight as to how loving and supportive the family was with each other, the narrator description of the things they were going through was very nonchalant but also at the same time fed up of their living situation. The story overall was very interested to see everything unravel.
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Taheed, I have to admit that I’m a little mystified on your take on “Gil’s (not girls) Furniture Bought & Sold.” Your focus on the darkness of the place is interesting, but I don’t understand how you feel that the story gives insight into the supportiveness of Esperanza’s family. Please do explain. Also, try to avoid slang in these posts (e.g. “intel”). We’re pretty casual here, but this is still English class. Smiley face.
In “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisnero the vignette I choose is “My name”. This is the story of a girl named Esperanza who inherits her name from her great-grandmother. The story is based on the meaning of her name and the reason why she does not like her name. First, she is from the year of the horse, and for the Chinese, and Mexican it is bad luck that you are born a woman. Second, her great-grandmother married her grandfather practically forced, this was the reason why her great-grandmother spent her whole life looking out the window trying to escape from her sad reality. For all these reasons, Esperanza does not like her name because she does not want to inherit the same sad fate as her great-grandmother. I liked these vignettes for several reasons. First, it is true that many parents name their children after other relatives, especially grandparents. Second, I am one of those who believe that the name of a person marks the destiny of the person. The name can say many things about your gender, religion, and more. A person’s name is an important part of that person’s identity. In addition, the name has a lot to do with how other people see you treat you, and what they expect of you. When I was little I didn’t like my name because I thought it was too strong for my personality and I almost forced my mother to change it. I think I identify with the character of Esperanza but now when I grow up I love my name, now I understand why my name is Raquel.
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Raquel, thank you for the thoughtful and personal response to the question. It’s interesting that you used to feel that your name was too strong for you. To me, it does sound like a strong name. That’s why it’s great that you have grown into it and have come to appreciate it. Great post!
Hello professor, thank you so much!!
Hello Raquel, I enjoyed reading your powerful post. Your line “I am one of those who believe that the name of a person marks the destiny of the person” really stands out to me. I am a Christian and a portion of the Bible say “a good name is better than riches.” My understanding from this portion is that, it is better to chose a good name and protect that name. I believe most of our names have hidden superpowers that we might not even be aware of and I agree with you that your name has a lot to do with how people treat you!
Ebube, I really like your remark about how we should “protect” our names.
To be honest, this is my very first time of coming across The House on Mango Street and from my understanding employing the use of Vignettes as a literary technique is brilliant by Sandra Cisneros. I would like to discuss “Meme Ortiz” in my response post. I see him as the new guy in town, moved in recently and already has something fishy around him by being addressed by two names. He told Esperenza his name was “Meme” when it was really “Juan” and that might have pushed them away from having a friendship. I know what it feels like to have one person call you this while another person calls you a separate name. As an immigrant, I understand this because sometimes I feel you just want to be addressed by the name that might be easier to pronounce and you let your family call you by the more traditional or difficult name. This is why I find “Meme Ortiz” a very interesting vignette from The House on Mango Street.
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Ebube, I find “Meme Ortiz” to be one of the more enigmatic vignettes in the book. I don’t see why he would choose Meme over Juan, so this sets up a mystery about him or makes him a little “fishy,” as you say. What I actually love most about this vignette is the description of Meme’s floppy dog and the crooked house Meme lives in. It seems that he remains a mystery and is mostly remembered for breaking his arms in the Tarzan contest. I do know what you mean though about how many immigrants choose a name that’s easy to say. It must get exhausting to keep telling others how to pronounce your real name! I don’t think most of your colleagues know your real name, and I have admitted to you that I’m glad you use a shorter version. However, it might have been good for me to learn and get used to to your beautiful long name!
Hey Professor, thank you for your feedback. I kept reading it with a huge smile on my face. I agree with you that most of my colleagues don’t know that the longer version of my name is CHUKWUDIEBUBE. But I just chose Ebube like Juan chose Meme. We might need to set up a zoom session for pronunciation lessons…LOL!!
Chukwudiebube, thank you for sharing this wonderful name with the group! I like the idea for the name pronunciation Zoom meeting!
This is my first time reading Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street.” The vignette I chose that really stood out to me the most is “Darius & the Clouds.” I believe that the theme for this vignette is to make the best of what you have with what you get but never settle. Here we meet Darius. He “doesn’t like school, who is sometimes stupid, and mostly a fool…thinks he’s tough,…” (33) but said that the cloud was God. It’s hard to understand at first that it’s not that the cloud looks like God but it is God.
Esperanza has expressed that everything in the neighborhood is ugly and that the only beauty they see sometimes are the flowers and butterflies. Darius, who is not the brightest in the bunch, manages to find beauty in the cloud. We would think that perhaps Esperanza or even her friends and family would be the one to see it but they’re still adjusting. I believe the sky symbolizes the freedom that they wish they had, at least Esperanza considering she’s still trying to make friends and has issues with “self-identity.” Thanks to Darius, Esperanza is able to open her eyes and see more beauty, even if it’s just God.
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Nathaly, thank you for this beautifully expressed comment about “Darius and the Clouds.” I love this vignette because it reminds us that people we might view as graceless or dull and incapable of having a lofty idea, can surprise us with flashes of understanding or insight far beyond our own. Your last line is priceless. “Thanks to Darius, Esperanza is able to open her eyes and see more beauty, even if it’s just God.”
I enjoyed reading all the vignettes and could identify with many. I chose “Hairs” (pg 6) – “Everybody in our family has different hair.”
My mother is very fair-skinned, blonde hair, light brown eyes. She’s always asked if she is Polish or Russian, with her thick spanish accent she responds, “No, I am from la isla del encanto, Puerto Rico. My father is dark-skinned, thick black hair, wide nose, full lips. He’s what they call “Nuyorican.” We all look so different, all unique. Like branches on a tree, very distinctive to one another yet all stem from one place. Our strong roots and traditions – salsa music and staple dishes like arroz con gandules, roast pork and pasteles for the holidays. All of these things that make us feel at home and safe, when we look at our family even with all the differences in appearance.
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Arlene, thanks for this lovely post about “Hairs” and how you can relate it to your own family experience. I think it’s great when family members all look different from each other yet are so similar in a multitude of ways.
Hi Arlene,
I wanted to respond to your comment because I found it interesting that you discussed your own family and compared it to the story. To be honest the same goes for my family. My mom and dad look significantly different (They are from different races) therefore me and my sister are very different when it comes to our physical apprentice, but it is interesting how we lived similar lives and have similar experiences and how this was a critical point of how we view the world around us. I think this difference among the similarities is what makes us a family. A real bond beyond our appearance.
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This is my first time reading “The House on Mango Street” the vignette I will discuss is “Chanclas”. The shoes in this vignette as well as in “The Family of Little Feet” symbolize sexuality as Esperanza is transitioning from childhood to adolescence. She experiences the desire to be desired by a boy. When Esperanza’s mother goes out to buy new a new outfit for the baptism party she forgets to get new shoes. So Esperanza has to wear her old brown and white saddle shoes she wears for school. When a boy asks her to dance she declines because she feels ashamed of her shoes. When her Uncle Nacho finally convinces her to dance she dances beautifully and forgets all about her shoes. When they stop everyone claps for them and her mother is so proud of her. The last two lines “All night the boy who is a man watches me dance. He watched me dance.” I think shows Esperanza’s realization that the boy didn’t care about how her shoes looked he liked to watch her dance because she was a great dancer. She seems very sensitive and shy she may even sometimes feel ashamed of herself and this may affect her development. Despite Esperanza being ashamed of her shoes she still got the attention she desired from the boy.
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Michaela, this is a good response to one of the “shoe” stories in the book. You express very well how Esperanza transcends her concerns about her shoes and lets herself dance, as she knows she can, realizing as taste of sexual power that has nothing to do with clothing or shoes.
Hello Michaela Ramirez, I liked the way you equated this story to an understanding of the authors own sexuality. It really shows that once we stop worrying about what other people think and be ourselves we can really shine and truly become beautiful. I have felt ashamed in the past about my shabby clothing and it’s still something I struggle with. Do you feel you connect to this story in that way too?
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“Cathy Queen of Cats”
Queen of cats is very interesting. In the vignette she talks about all the different people living in her area, and then talks about Cathy and all her cats. Cathy’s house is sort of a community within the community, this is made clear when she explains how different all the cats are. The theme of this vignette I believe touches on gentrification, and innocence of children. Muhc like the cats, the children don’t really have a say in what their owners (their parents) say or do, which could mean moving away. This story also resonated with me particularly because me and my fiance own 3 cats and they all are very different and spend time in different areas of the house. Its as if we have a small Mango street in our home. Jerry lives in the living room, Louis lives under the bed, and Phil lives on top of the highest book shelf in the backroom.
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James, thank you for introducing us to Jerry, Louis, and Phil. I bet you love the phrase in “Cathy Queen of Cats”: “Cats alseep like little donuts.” What a vivid visual image! It’s interesting that, as you point out, this is a vignette that touches on the gentrification of the neighborhood, and yet Cathy loves her cats and lets them walk all over the dining room table. I am a die-hard animal lover, but still I’m struck by how some people can love a “community of cats,” as you so beautifully put it, yet not a community of diverse human beings. Of course, none of this is Cathy’s fault, as she too is a child. It’s interesting that Esperanza can read the meaning behind her words about the neighborhood getting bad.
I have read “The House on Mango Street” twice in the past. The first time I read it in Farsi, many years ago. This was an emotional story for me to read because I remembered reading a part of the story to my grandmother a few months before she passed away. (more than 10 years ago.)
I chose “The Name” (p 10-11) for two reasons:
As I have shared in this class, I have experienced some difficulties with my name living in different countries. I understand that the idea of changing your name is eventually tied up to the idea of changing your past, yourself, or the people’s expectations from you. For example, in this story, she feels that she carries some of the weight of her grandmother’s story just by carrying her name, so she might believe that by changing her name she will get rid of that weight from the past. This can be a good or a negative point depending on your story and your life.
The other reason that I choose this part is to share a personal story that I think might be inspiring to some people. My grandmother was forced to marry my grandfather more than 70 years ago in a religious and traditional country like Iran. She was not happy with her life and she knew she wanted a different life, but she was 13 years old when they forced her to marry my grandfather (who by the way was not happy with that decision either.) After having 3 children my grandmother became the first woman in her city to get divorced at the age of 30 and move to the capital city to make sure she can support her children. She always used to say that she should write a book from her story and tell girls that never is too late to take back the control that was stolen from you and nothing is harder than staying in a place that doesn’t satisfy you. Reding this part about the cultural forces and pressures on women made me want to say this story although it is not discussing the vignette per se.
I think Sandra Cisneros communicated the same message that my grandmother wanted to say by that vignette.
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Afsaneh,
This is a heartbreaking story and it really does bring home the message of this story. Much like your grandmother, Esperenza’s great grandmother was forced to lose her voice as a human being and as a woman due to harmful gender norms that were enforced on her at a very young age. There’s no doubt that people who have the misfortune to have to succumb to these norms have pain and trauma that linger on for generations to come. That’s why Esperanza wants to separate herself os much from this name. But I think ultimately this teaches us that we shouldn’t allow these traumatic experiences to rip us from the beauty of our cultures and our names. I’m so glad you shared this experience.
Hello Afsaneh,
Thank you for sharing your personal story with us, it is inspiring and full of emotions, and I thank you for that.
I also decided to discuss “The name” for this week’s assignment, since as a foreign student I can totally relate to your experience about having a different and unique name in a new country. You mentioned in your post how Esperanza feels about caring her grandmother’s name, and the responsibility that goes with that name. In my post, I also referred to this part of the story, since I have a middle name that was given to me after my dad’s sister who passed away before I was born.
This is my first time reading a so called “vignette.” I had read a few from “The House of Mango Street” but the one that really stuck out to me was “Gil’s Furniture Bought and Sold.” I particularly enjoyed this vignette because of it mystery. I chose this vignette due to it reminding me of a store so similar right next to my house and my mother would take me when I was younger. Usually I wouldn’t get anything is he only mostly had antique items that as a child I frankly did not really care about, but one time my mom got a little statue and we had it ever since reminding me of the store. The ending really stuck out to me as I did not expect it at all. When the author says “the old man says shutting the lid, this ain’t for sale.” I turned the page thinking there would be more and was actually upset because I wanted to know more about the music box and why out of all the items he had in the store, he wouldn’t sell it? It just didn’t make sense, this made me reread the definition of a vignette realizing how short of stories they can actually be and still have meaning.
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David, please take a look at the very first comment in this week’s discussion by David Flick. I think it might demystify your response to “Gil’s Furniture Bought & Sold.” Also, revisit the vignette if you have some time. What more do you really need to know about this music box that is not already in the story?
Hm. Professor Conway & David, this is very interesting – I’m going to come back to this with a proper response.
Hello David and of course Professor Conway! So, David, I can’t believe I missed your first post on “Gil’s Furniture Bought & Sold.” especially because the directions are not to use the same vignette as a classmate. I had to reread your post a few times as it was (at least to me) very spiritual. This side of the story did not occur to me. Another reason why I love reading, as it can be interpreted in multiple ways. However, I do now see what the “other” can represent and also vary from person to person just like literature. When you said, and I quote “individuals require the “other” in order to identify conceptions of “self,” “same,” and “us” – which, among other things, becomes that which allows people and societies to connect through universal senses of being and belonging.” This hit me on a spiritual level and made my mind wander and think about things in a whole new perspective and I actually wanted to say thank for helping me in a way to say… access different parts of my mind. Also when you said “that money not only can’t buy everything, but that its monetary value is meaningless to things meant to be intrinsically valuable in life.” This made me understand the true meaning of the box in this specific story as I was lost at first read. Thank you Professor for the advice on bringing in David into the conversation!
David let me know what you think or if you have anything to add on! Also if you wouldn’t mind I would love to read your final essay and hopefully learn something new from that as well.
Again, big thank you for your time and explanations!!
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David, thank you for your gracious response. If you want to read David Flick’s essay, click on the Shared Student Essay link on the main menu. A few others have also posted.
Thanks to this week’s assignment, I read The House on Mango Street for the first time. I must admit that I enjoy reading this story since I felt like I am experiencing with Esperanza all the events and emotions she experienced in the described events.
For this week’s assignment, I decided to discuss the “The Name” (pages 10-11) as I mentioned before, being foreign and live in a new country and a new culture, always made me feel uncomfortable with my name and how it is preannounced. But besides my first name, which makes me feel uncomfortable in a new country, I also have a middle name who makes me feel uncomfortable even in my home country. In my home country, having a middle name is not a common thing. For that reason, every time I am arriving in a new place, people are very curious why do I have a middle name and what does it stands for. My middle name is named after my dads’ sister, who died when she was 5 years old. In order to honor her, and since I am the eldest sister, my father decided to name me after her. As mentioned in “The Name” I sometimes feel like I am not deserve being named after her, from stories I have heard about her I knew she was an amazing, funny, and loving child. As mentioned in the story, “I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees.” I feel like I can relate to that phrase since I sometimes wished to remove my middle name and not to be recognized by it. In this story, Esperanza feels like she is caring for the weight of her family history on her shoulders, and I think that by having a middle name I am responsible for my aunt’s memory.
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Hello Shai, I enjoyed hearing your response to “The Name” and your experience with being named after an amazing family member. My middle name comes from my grandfather (mom’s dad) who passed before I was born. I can understand the pressures of having to live up to the name of someone you don’t know who was gone too soon. When reading this vignette, I thought back to my middle name which I feel like I can’t really relate to. However, I liked the uniqueness of it and always believed I’d figure out a way to make it my own instead of wanting to change it like Esperanza or feel the need to be exactly like the person I was named after.
I have to thank this week’s assignment for bringing me back my high school years. I read “The House on Mango Street” and it was a very interested story. For this week’s assignment I chose the vignette “The House on Mango Street” which is based on a family of six living in a small house. I really liked this vignette because it is kind of the apartment in New York City. This vignette focuses more about the family itself. They talk about how this family had to move from house to houses because they did not own one for themselves. This vignette really impacted me because a lot of people here in New York City have to keep moving from house to house because their landlord/owner wants them to move or they need the house. This vignette brings disappointment and trying to identify themselves and that’s exactly what happens in New York. A lot of people need to move from the house they are living in as I mentioned before and that’s exactly what happens in this vignette. Some people need to share room just like this family in The House on Mango Street. A lot of us New Yorkers even need to move to a different town and again we need to find ourselves and adapt ourselves to the new places.
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Not everyone can relate to the ethnic difficulties of Esperanza and her family, however, anyone who’s been poor can related to the environment they live in. I’ve chosen the “The House on Mango Street (pg.3 – pg. 5), for such a reason. I can relate to many of the thoughts and feelings expressed in this vignette. I would have a hard time explaining any “theme” I derive from this with clarity, but I can share my take on what the central idea is, from experience is hope. In paragraph two Esperanza creates a list of everyday struggles that anyone who has had to live in a place they couldn’t call their own; “Share the yard”, “make too much noise”, “banging on the ceiling”. A general lack of privacy, and constantly having to be on you guard to uphold curtesy’s to people that you don’t talk to or sometimes even like. I know this feeling, and I hate it, I’m a private person, and having to come home and still keep your guard up is no way to live. There are a lot of ways you can travel through these points in your life; you can grow out of them, you could fall in deeper, or you could sometimes not survive. Growing out of this is sometimes the hardest path, and you must cling to a lot of things.
Why hope? I think hope is the umbrella, to all the emotions and ambitions that hang over you during this time in life. Hope that you can make it out, and that you will make something better, that you’ll get that house you always wanted, with no strings attached.
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The vignette from “The House of Mango Street” that stood out to me the most is “Laughter”. I resonated with it a lot immediately from the first line, “Nenny and I don’t look like sisters…not right away” because this describes me and my mother perfectly. We look nothing alike from skin color to facial features, but we have some distinct qualities such as our laughter, general sense of humor, and personality traits that are very noticeably similar. You would never believe the two of us are related until you see the way we react to someone’s joke so identically, then it’s clear that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I think the main idea in this vignette is that even after finding new friends, the connection Esperanza has with her sister is unmatched. I relate to this even today, especially with my mom. As I’ve grown older I’ve made a lot of friends and spend more time outside with them than with her. I see her properly on the weekends and although sometimes I may prioritize seeing my friends and cousins closer to my age, I have the most genuine laughs and unplanned fun moments with my mom because our like-mindedness is undeniable. We have good times without even trying and can spend hours making each other laugh.
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Hello Zubaida,
I love how lighthearted and wholesome your contribution to this week’s discussion board is! You relate so perfectly to this vignette, and I feel that this is exactly the sort of introspection the author intended for her readers to experience at some point in, “The House on Mango Street.” So many people can identify with the relationship Esperanza shares with her sister, including myself. My brother, unlike me, is blonde, brown-eyed, and has very different priorities than myself. However, like you and your mother, and like Esperanza and Nenny, my brother and I share the same sense of humor, the same childhood experiences, which are qualities that I will never find with another person.
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The vignette that struck me the most was the one entitled “My Name”. In this vignette, Esperanza reveals her dense and layered feelings on her name. Almost immediately, she gives us a blunt impression of what she thinks of her name, saying that in English, Esperanza means hope, but in Spanish, it means “too many letters”. She then describes how her name was passed down to her from her great grandmother whom was also named Esperanza. When I initially began to read this story, I was baffled as to why Esperanza would have such indifferent feelings regarding her name. “Esperanza is a beautiful and unique name”, I thought, “How could anyone hate such a name?’. Then she describes how her great grandmother had her dreams dashed by her great grandfather, which made her suffer greatly thoughout the rest of her life. A woman who had the world at the palm of her hand suddenly doomed to a life of domesticity. Now Esperanza is in the precarious position of bearing the name she once had. She doesn’t want to be found suffering the same fate as her great grandmother and will do anything to ensure that she doesn’t, even if that means denouncing her name.
Her thoughts on the comments she would get from her classmates regarding her name. Those subtle micro aggressions she describes reminds me of Names, Nombres by Julia Alvarez where she also describes her experiences with her non Latino peers misunderstanding her name. It also connects with me. While I do have an extremely American name, my experience as an Afro Latinx person growing up makes me relate to Esperanza. The feeling of needing to shrink parts of myself in order to assimilate to the so called American way of life is all too familiar.
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Sandra Cisneros’ novel The House on Mango Street is one that I am very familiar with having read it on multiple occasions for fun and as a requirement for some course throughout my younger and adult school life. Many of the vignettes resonate me since I see myself in many of the stories. As a result of reading this novel, I was able to make connection to a recent video by Dr. Shawn Ginwright that I viewed while attending a youth workshop on trauma-informed and healing practices. Ginwright spoke of the negative effects that follow an individual who suffer emotion trauma at a young age and if not fully healed could be part of a continuous cycle that offers little change. I see this in Cisneros novel where the character Esparanza experiences many situations that are traumatic. These experiences however motivate her to move away from these circumstances and environment whenever the opportunity present itself. The one thing that therefore stands out for me forms part of the theme which is that of resilience.
The very first chapter hit out to me when the nun who is supposed to be a figure of authority and understanding referred to Esperanza home as “there” in a dejecting manner. Esperanza said the nun’s response to her answer of where she lived had a negative effect on her. She said “it made me feel like nothing.” This created a sense of shame she carried with her after leaving that particular house. She knew then than she had to get out from that environment in order to feel like somebody. Throughout the novel from one vignette to another we see Esperanza experiencing difficulties that had she not been resilient she could have crumpled and suffered the fate of so many of the other characters in the stories. Though not a physical and fancy traditional home, I think Esperanza found a temporary home in the poems she wrote. They helped to make her strong as she could escape in comfort there away from everyone and everything as she put the things she experiences on paper. This has helped her to be resilient.
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Hello Kendra,
Resilience as you mention is a powerful quality. I think there are probably a lot of emotions that can go in to one being resilient in any situation, whether it be anger, or hope, or love. Maybe it’s just desire to reach a goal. Having a hard skin and fighting through adversity is something we all should experience. It makes the human spirit strong, making the individuals community stronger, and touching so many lives.
Wow. Just wow. This week’s reading has to be one of my favorite assignments thus far. I loved every single vignette! Cisneros’s personality shines through in her writing and her stylistic literary choices are, what I feel, makes “The House on Mango Street” so unique. The narrator is, in some way, relatable to each and every reader through her navigation of the challenges presented with childhood, embarrassment, conflict, danger, and (most importantly), growing up. Full disclosure, it’s extremely difficult for me to select just one vignette to discuss this week, however, given the assignment, I’ve decided upon “Alicia Who Sees Mice.” I resonate with so many of these snapshots into Esperanza’s life, including her constant moving from place to place, her feeling of alienation from others due to this lifestyle, her experiences with poverty, the chronic embarrassment she struggles with, the predatory nature of men — I even recall using some of the same jump rope chants with my own friends as a child! However, the character that stuck out to me most was Alicia. I identify most with her ambition, her work ethic, her drive to avoid the life that she’s seen so many women before her succumb to. I’m absolutely in love with the juxtaposition of time in this vignette: the way that the author uses the contrast of night and day to inform the readers of Alicia’s subtle rebellion against the societal and cultural expectation of women. She does this through her habit of staying up late to study (in which she sees the mice– the ones that her father refuses to acknowledge) while experiencing the pressure from her father to instead rise early to tend to her “womanly” duties. Alicia elects to spend her nights studying, risking conflict and exhaustion, rather than allowing herself to be repressed into rising early, which would essentially be her submission to the expected gender roles.
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Hello Emily!
First, your appreciation for the reading is infectious! I can understand the difficulty in having to choose only one vignette to write on – I myself had 4 or 5 vignettes on deck to write about before going with the one I had chosen.
Your comments on the “juxtaposition of time” is what had mainly drew me to your post. Although I don’t quite identify with the characters on the same level as you might (though I’ll say that I thought it was so cool you were able to draw such direct connections to Alicia), the nature of time as it relates to rebelling against cultural norms and expectations – “the contrast of night and day” – reflects, I believe, on human nature in general. It goes without saying we’re all extremely complex – by no means can anybody say to you, to myself, or anyone that they are in fact, one-dimensional – we’re layered like onions, like layers of sediment stacking on top of each other over millions of years. This is one reason I’ve always believed that gender can’t just necessarily be two-sided – but that’s another conversation. Insofar as our society has been and continues to be patriarchal, I find it increasingly important in studying literature to recognize those forces at work – and posts like yours follow that sentiment. Thanks for a great read into your insights.
David
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Hi Emily,
In this vignette Alicia’s character also stood out to me. She represents someone who is strong because she overcomes her fears by staying up late to study so that she could earn a degree and get out of poverty. The mice symbolizes poverty and that is her biggest fear. I think Alicia feels trapped in a life that women should stick to their duties and she is trying to get out of it. Alicia and Esperanza are alike because they seek independence but this section shows how challenging it will be.
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Emily,
I remember the jump rope chants too! The comparison of day to night was also very eyecatching and made me think about that part of this vignette a little deeper. I also loved the rebellion to her gender-roles that were expected of Alicia. Great response!
The story “The House on Mango Street ” by Sandra Cisneros the vignette I choose “My name” I could connect lot from that story because the way Esperanza describe her name and meaning, I could relate to that and how she took her great-great mother name; I also took my grandmother last name “Begom”which is now my middle name. I was surprised when she said “ At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth”(pg-11). This made me realize my Bengali friends used to make fun of my middle name Begom . They always said it sounds like “Begun” in English it’s Eggplant. I used to get so angry when they called me Begun. They would call me a little girl because I wasn’t able to fight them back. I think the central idea my name is that people are not born with their own names, but rather that they have been given names from birth. Esperanza is a very strong woman who has many different personalities. She is a very independent and self-sufficient person. My name reminds me of our previous reading story Names/Nombres because how Esperanza describes her name is the same way Julia describes in her story about mispronunciation names.
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Hello Humayra,
Names is a very interesting topic to talk about. I think that most of us have suffered bullying from our names. In my family also used to give the new baby born the name of the mother or grandmother. I don’t know why??? I think that is because if they give the same name they are going to be like the same person that has that name. Unfortunately, we can not choose our names and I think also that most of us don’t like our names. I like how to compare to the previous reading names is a very interesting topic to talk about.
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Humayra,
I also really loved this vignette and I could relate to it a lot. I could understand how Esperanza felt because I had the same struggle growing up. I was also named after my great grandmother who was very loved and respected in my family but I hated it so much because everyone would have trouble pronouncing it and kids would even tease me about it. My parents would try to make me feel better by telling me how it meant beauty and I should be proud of it. Just like Esperanza, I wanted to change it, but I think it’s silly to believe that words hold this much power over a person, and a name can’t determine your identity which took me a long time to realize for myself and my own name.
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Hello Humayra,
I too, can relate to “My Name”. The mispronunciation of my middle name and the sense of disrespect bother me about people who are not familiar with a culture outside of their own. Even if it not me, I hate to hear someone not respect the difference in someone’s name or require a nickname because “the name is difficult to pronounce.” I also hate the people from other countries change their names just to fit into “American Society.” America has always been considered a melting pot and that exactly what people when they come here unfortunately, they melt into society conforms so much so that they lose their own identity and culture.
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Summer, this post cannot receive credit because it was posted on Monday, December 7. No one will read this (except me).
Reading the story “The House on Mango Street” was a really enjoyable experience and I love how easy to understand and easy to follow it was as well. The vignette that really piqued my interest was “Hairs”, my reason for picking the hair vignette is because I can relate to it just the same. Everyone in my family has different hair and just like her I appreciate and love my mothers hair more than mine and anyone else’s. My mom’s hair is the hair I really wish I had because of its texture, curls and natural reddish brown color. My hair is the opposite of my moms she has type 3 hair and I have 4c. It’s dark brown and almost black. I get jealous of her hair of course because it’s longer than mine. It’s also the same with my aunt they both have the best hair in the family.
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Hello Zakiyah,
I liked how you stated “Everyone in my family has different hair and just like her I appreciate and love my mothers hair more than mine and anyone else’s” my family everyone has straight hair. Sometimes I wish I had curly hair rather than straight hair. My aunt has curly hair with bangs. Sometimes I wish to have hair like her. Esperanza’s family has different hair but she loves her mother’s hair when she said “But my mother’s hair, my mother’s hair, like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty”(pg-6). She also says that she likes her mom’s hair because it is so beautiful. The way Esperanza talks about her mother is very interesting and makes me think of a lot of things in life. I think that Esperanza is very intelligent and smart.
I really enjoyed reading “Cathy Queen of Cats”. Cathy really gives Esperanza the rundown of the neighborhood, “who is who” and “what is what” and “why things are the way they are” although her sentiments likely are mirrors and her own interpretations of the thoughts and beliefs of the adults around her. When she is describing matter of factly that Alicia “used to like me but now she doesn’t,” it’s possible that Alicia went to college and saw beyond the neighborhood and the neighborhood ideas and began to form her own opinions, which were out of sync with Cathy’s.
Cathy also tells Esperanza that the neighborhood is “getting bad” and doesn’t seem to realize that Esperanza’s family is why they will keep moving a little up the street. I wonder what Cathy’s narrative about Esperanza and Esperanza’s family will become.
This story reminds me of moving so much as a kid. My family moved almost every year, resulting in me going to 11 different schools, effectively a new school for each grade. When I would start a new school there was always a kid who self appointed him/herself as the unofficial student ambassador and would quickly befriend me (or any new student!) and show me the school the way they saw it. Who were the “cool” kids, who not to sit next to, which lunch line to go to, what tables to sit at, which teachers were “good” or “terrible” and then whatever the scandal of the moment was. When Cathy said “Okay, I’ll be your friend, but only till next Tuesday. That’s when we move away.” it reminds me of when the kid would usually move on. As I would acclimate in the school and start going to classes and join activities they would usually fall away and become an acquaintance. Except for a girl named Anna in Atlanta in the 9th grade. She and I are still friends!
Ashley
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Hi Lauren,
You chose a great vignette to explain. Cathy is the person who has a lot of cats everywhere and she is going to introduce how are the people in that neighborhood. I like how you explain about Alicia. When people grew up they change their way of thinking and personalities. After Alicia when to college she no longer is Cathy’s friend. As we can she when Alicia is in college she starts a new stage and changes her personality. I like how you compare this vignette to yourself when you change the school. I think that we all have a friend like Cathy that tell us everything about the new place where we are.
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Hello Ashley,
I find it interesting that you had to go to a new school every year. I can’t speak from experience, so I’m sure in reality I wouldn’t feel so open too it or as interesting. But I do wonder. I’m very close to the chest and was never a popular person, so maybe after all it would have been a better atmosphere. Unfortunately we can’t go back and experiment. Unless Elon Musk invents a time machine among all else.
The vignette that causes me the strongest impression is “Those who don’t”. The central idea for this vignette is How others look at us. In the previous vignettes Esperanza relates how she starts making friends and how and where they used to hang out. In the vignette “Those who Don’t” the author relates how other people look at them when they were walking together in the streets. The author states “They think we’re dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives”. It means that when people look at them, people thought that they were a gang and people feared them. It resonated for me because it is like stereotypes when people look at a group a teens they think that they are a gang. It also causes me an impression because the author is a good person and other people used to think that she is a bad person just looking that she is hanging out with friends.
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I decided to discuss “A Rice Sandwich” because of the moral lesson that Esperanza learns. In the beginning, Esperanza is jealous of the “special” kids because they get to eat in the canteen. She urges her mother to write her a note to allow her to eat in the canteen but Sister Superior does not accept Esperanza’s mother’s note. Sister Superior says to Esperanza that she lives too close to school and starts pointing to rundown tenements and accuses Esperanza of living there. Esperanza gets embarrassed and she starts crying. She is allowed to eat in the canteen but only on that day. In the final paragraph, she realizes that the canteen is nothing “special.”
Esperanza really wanted something that others had and she didn’t, so she went through some trouble (begging her mother) to get it. Finally after all the pleading, she finally gets what she wants but it turns out to be a horrible experience for her. She learns that sometimes wanting something and getting it in the end doesn’t mean it could be a happy ending.
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Angela,
I also thought that it was a very interesting vignette. As awful as it seems, we all have had moments where we get jealous and want what someone else has, even if that thing turns out to be not at all what they expected. Happy ending was also an interesting phrase you used. I agree that not everything has a happy ending, and they actually rarely happen, but it was good for Esperanza to learn that that day.
Like many of my coursemates, I, too, enjoyed reading “The House on Mango Street.” The way every vignette flowed, allowing us into Esperanza’s life, following along as she makes decisions and mature is quite impressive.
The vignette that made the strongest impression on me is “Darius & the Clouds.” When referring to the sky, I feel that it is a metaphor for freedom and making the best of what you have. The sky has no limits, the sky has no boundaries, and it is beautiful. In Esperanza’s neighborhood, being poor, there isn’t much going on, and most things that are beautiful like butterflies and flowers are few and far between. This central idea resonates with me because just as “the sky can keep you safe when you are sad,” I am most free and comforted when amongst life’s best subtle offerings, the sky, ocean, flowers, (not butterflies because they frighten me).
I would also like to mention my first time on an airplane, around age five, up in the clouds; I asked my parents, “Where is God?”. Somehow I thought God would be visible. I wish Darius were there to point out God can be found in any of those clouds.
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Faith,
I also liked this vignette, I tried to figure out what the clouds and sky actually symbolized and I think your analogy makes perfect sense. Esperanza feels like there aren’t enough of these things that she admires like the sky, flowers, and butterflies but her coming from a poor neighborhood would make sense that it deprives her of a lot of life’s most basic assets. I think Darius disagrees with Esperanza when he says the cloud is God because unlike her, he is making the most of what he has and seeing beyond what’s on the surface.
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Hi Faith,
Referring to the sky as a metaphor for freedom makes a lot of sense. I agree that the sky has no limits, the sky has no boundaries, and it is beautiful. I like how you compared that idea to you flying because although I’m also afraid of heights I can not help but look outside of the window. Simply just admiring the clouds and feeling safe from the haste of when it’s time to land..back to the haste on solid ground.
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The vignette that made the strongest impression on me was “There as an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn’t Know What to Do.” Firstly, this vignette’s theme falls in line with Sandra Cisneros’ Biography in Gale in Context. In her biography, the themes frequently present in her writing have to do with the gender roles and expectations of being a woman. The biography mentions that in The House on Mango Street, Cisneros wrote about women in a way that emphasizes these gender roles and is also an example of what the main character, Esperanza, didn’t want to be like when she grew up. In the vignette “There as an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn’t Know What to Do”, Esperanza talks about Rosa Vargas, who was left on her own to raise her multiple children and is stuck doing only that. Rosa is also doing it alone, making it so that her children are even more challenging to manage. The reason that this made such a strong impression was that it reminded me of my upbringing. I was raised by a single Puerto Rican mom who did the best she could for my brother and me. While she was our only provider, she didn’t stay stuck in the same way Rosa Vargas did with her children. The way Rosa was written was that she seemed stuck in her role as a mother, and that was all. I feel my mom differed from that by taking care of my brother and me while also pursuing her career and being successful. From Cisneros’ biography and The House on Mango Street, the expectation from women wasn’t one that allowed them to be mothers or a wife while also being strong and successful. This mom is very different from the mom I have, who has a strong character, will, and success. She has all the qualities a good mom has while having the qualities of a strong woman. These aren’t qualities that need to be one or the other, but can very well be both.
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When reading the house on Mango street there were many great vignettes that the main character Esperanza makes but the one that caught my attention the most was the vignette “My name”. The vignette is the first time we know of the narrators name which is Esperanza. Throughout it she talks about her name and how she cant properly say it correctly. She also thinks it means “too many letters” and thinks she needs a new name because of this but then goes on to talking about her great grandmother who she got her name from and thinks about a few things she and her share like how they were both born on the year of the horse. The vignette ends with her saying shell name herself Zeze the X. I think the central theme of this is childish thinking because when I read this entire vignette I could see how Esperanza is simply misunderstanding her name because she is still a young child like how she doesn’t like her name because “it has too many letters” but in English it means “Hope”. This is one of the examples of the theme of childish thinking and this is one of the reasons why I really like this vignette more then the other ones because when I read it i cant help but laugh at how adorable it is to see Esperanza not knowing what her name really means and is still to young to know some of things about herself.
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After reading “The House On Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros, the pages that stuck out to me the most were pages 23-25, which was “Louie, His cousin & His Other Cousin. The Story was about A Puerto Rican family that moved into the downstairs apartment in Meme Ortiz’s house. The person that the apartment was rented to was a guy named Louie which was the main characters, older brother’s friend. One day Louie came back with a nice yellow Cadillac that had automatic windows, a nice radio, and everything they could dream of in a car. But, they all wondered where in the world did he get this car from and how did he get it. He tells everyone to get in for a test drive and then they rode off. During the drive they all heard police sirens and then Louie told everyone to get out. Everyone got out then Louie sped off as the cops chased him, until he crashed into a lamppost and was taken away in handcuffs. I think the main theme of this vignette is that ignorance is bliss. I say this because to me it sounds like this family is poor and never got to experience the luxury side of life. So when Louie came with the Cadillac, yea they wondered where he got it from but in the moment they didn’t care because they never had the opportunity to experience the “fancy” things in life. This resonates with me because sometimes I catch myself in situations where I want to experience something so bad that I don’t stop to think about the situation as a whole.
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I have actually already read “The House on Mango Street” in high school. My 10th grade english class read it, so it has been quite a few years.. but re-reading it was interesting to me. Personally, it is hard to relate anything to my own personal life.. But, I think the vignette, House on Mango Street was the most impressionable. Maybe that is because we focussed on it a lot in my high school class, or maybe thats just the one I remember the best. It was a class about empathy. We read all sorts of books based around that same idea, “A Long Walk to Water”, and “Unbroken” were two of my favorites. I have lived in a house my entire life, not only have I lived in a house my entire life, but I’ve lived in the same house my entire life. I only moved when I went to live on my own, and due to Covid, that only lasted 2 months… Moving every year seems unreal to me, I know how that sounds, but I can’t imagine. I know that is reality for a lot of people. It is just hard for me to grasp, I guess. My best friend and neighbor just moved from her childhood home to a new house in West Virginia. She was so upset and doing that multiple times seems heartbreaking.
While ready the book “The house On Mango Street” I immediately had straight connection to Esperanza. Esperanza was telling her true raw lifestyle. The vignette I choose is “No speak English” in the part of the story she talks about mamcita. Mamacita is homesick and she listens to the radio in Spanish. She misses home and Mamacita was brought here by her son. Many people from other countries come here for a better life bringing their families out here to live with them. Children bring their parents and leave them home alone. Loneliness and not being able to express their thoughts is what makes them homesick. My father tells me the this story every single time he can. He came to this country not knowing a single word of English and people abused him for that. He felt scared and lost because it wasn’t his country or language. He wasn’t eating traditional food because he had no clue where to search. Mamcita was living with her son and her son even painted the walls pink to make her feel home but it didn’t work. Home is where you create memories and feel loved.
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The vignette “Meme Ortiz” (21) in the novel “The House on Mango Street” left the strongest impression on me. As the vignette “Meme Ortiz” helps describe the scenery of the writer’s neighborhood, it emphasizes the theme of duality. Duality is exemplified in the names of the characters Meme Ortiz and his “sheepdog with two names”— called Meme around the neighborhood but Juan at home, and his dog having both an English and Spanish name shows the embrace of a single home’s embrace of two different cultures (and may represent the community as a whole being multicultural). The house Meme lives in with his mother is wooden, slanted, with crooked stairs, still serves as a sufficient home for Meme, the writer even adding that the crooked stairs were built that way so that “rain will slide off”—despite its appearance, it is practical and properly shelters Meme. Even Meme’s unkempt backyard while mostly dirt and greasy boards, hosts a tree that serves as a shelter to local squirrels showing the duality of a seemingly barren backyard also being a sustainable habitat for the squirrels around Meme’s home. That same tree is chosen and wins an Annual Tarzan Jumping Contest despite Meme breaking both arms in the process depicting the positive aspects as well as the negative and even dangerous memories linked to this nostalgic tree. This vignette resonated with me because it’s reminiscent of my childhood and even aspects of duality that still resides with me. My family and friends back home have always called me by my nickname “Marcy” and still do, while in my professional and public life I’m referred to by the actual name “Syndoll”. Though I respond to both names, they are not linked to the same memories and emotions as my nickname is more intimate and reminds me of my home in Guyana. I’m reminded of the tall and bushy yard I grew up on that was also unkempt and was riddled with bugs and snakes, and how much I enjoyed running and adventuring through what was considered to be unusable land. This same yard that I would play in was home to many childhood injuries from falls to snake bites, I reflect on the fun memories and the painful memories associated with this one yard.
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Syndoll, this was posted 3 minutes before the closing of the DB! No one read it except for me.
This is my third time reading “The House on Mango Street” by Sanda Cisneros. I originally read it in the fourth grade and enjoyed it so much because I could sort of understand what Cisneros felt at a young age. Every time I read it, I fall in love with it more. Looking back, I always resonated with the first vignette, “The House on Mango Street”. As a kid, I moved from apartment to apartment after my first house caught on fire. Unlike Cisneros, my family did not have a new addition to the family after everytime we moved. It stayed consistent at 4 for my whole life. Cisneros definitely illustrated how disappointed she is with the house on Mango Street. She states “I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One that I could point to. But this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street isn’t it”. I can still understand what she was going through as a child. The apartment I live in now is not the house I imagined living in as an adult. But I do know like Cisneros’ parents told her, it is only temporary.
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Karl, this was posted ONE minute before the closing of the Db.