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Which one of the vignettes from pages 1-57 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 be sure to address comments to others by name.
36 thoughts on “Week 5 Discussion”
From this week’s reading of The House on Mango Street, the vignette “And Some More” made a great impression on me. In this vignette, Esperanza is trying to engage Rachel, Lucy, and Nenny in a conversation about the names for different types of clouds, which she learned in school. This illustrates her academic interest and curiosity. It is another example in the book that Esperanza is formulating ideas that are more abstract and look beyond her immediate personal experiences. In this way, she seems more mature than then other girls who still just want to play. It also shows Esperanza growing out of the childhood imagination that fuels play and pretending. (The other girls are content to make up names for the clouds.) At the end of the vignette, Esperanza seems to desire more meaningful and enriching interactions.
I was impressed with Cisneros’s ability to capture and portray the mindset, behaviors, and voices of her young characters, which I think is very much on display in this sketch. The silly argument between the girls captures the way children truly behave, complete with a “your mama” insult. The dialogue does not read like a parody of the way children argue. Rather it truly portrays the way children think and act when having disagreements, sometimes playful and other times mean. In my opinion, the ability to capture this type of dynamic between the young characters is a great testament to Cisneros’s writing.
Note: For some unknown reason I was unable to italicize the title of the book.
Karl, yes, there is no way to italicize. That’s disconcerting for some of us grammar nerds.
Karl, I appreciate your appreciation for the author’s ability to reproduce the sound (and fury) of the children’s natural way of speaking. I agree that this is what enlivens the book and makes it feel so immediate. I always feel as if I were out on the street with this cast of neighborhood kids. I can relate to finding shapes in clouds, but I think it’s also true, as you note, that Esperanza has a greater intellectual curiosity than her friends. I like how you characterize the children’s arguments as “sometimes playful and other times mean.” We see here how a creative game, like naming clouds, can turn into an insult fest, which is very much how childish arguments devolve.
hi karl I think when she wrote the book is related on her life. For my opinion when I read this book and give me a depress and dangerous feeling . I saying this because when she writing this book she use lot of depressed word in her text. Call my feeling she don’t have any safety feeling in she’s hart.. Also I think this is a good story to be an lesson to teach the kids of course in a frenzy and creative way. It is a good idea if someone change this to a romantic little kids story and teaching the little kids a lesson.
“Darius & the Clouds” which is one vignette from The House on Mango Street, made the strongest impression on me. Beside the power of using imagery and symbolism, this vignette has plenty of beautiful language and simile that enhances the joy of imagination: “Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky. / Butterflies too are few /and so are flowers /and most things that are beautiful. Still, we take/ what we can get/ and make the best/ of it” (33). The poet utilizes the beautiful natural imagery contrasting with the sadness in her childhood surroundings. In particular, I could notice the rhythm and rhyme while I was reading this vignette. In the story “Darius,” the girl group is obviously relatable when she depicts the cloud in the clear sky as the sign of hope, sense of beauty and god for the kids on Mango Street. I recalled an innocent child’s memory where I ran around in the yard in the playground with my friends and pretended we were floating on the cloud. It’s a pure joy. In the last part, I feel cheerful from the message that the poet sends to her readers who are in the challenging time; happiness is not about getting everything that you want, it is about enjoying all you have in the moment. Darius is a young male protagonist who uses firecrackers or a stick to prove himself as a grown man to girls. The poet delineates young Darius as a simple human that can be stupid and wise at the same time, has inquiringly learnt how the world works under the existence of god. It reminds me of when I was a high school student. I used to over eat chillies for showing off my peers that I wasn’t a kid anymore. Undoubtedly, I had a very bad stomach ache that night. The themes of the vignette are hope, god, fearlessness.
Hi Kannikar,
After reading Darius in the Clouds, and reviewing my margin notes, I noticed that I made a note that “God is in the Clouds.” I did not comment on this vignette, but I am happy that you did. I wonder, do you think that Darius acted “stupidly and like a fool most times” because there was a lack of beauty and pleasant things in his life too more so than being an obnoxious boy? I ask the question because Darius is the one that looked at a cloud called it the “fat one” and saw God in it. Maybe he wanted to find beauty, pleasantness, and goodness in his life, family, and neighborhood too.
Lisa, these are very thought-provoking comments to Kannikar about “Darius and the Clouds!”
Thank you for your comments, Professor Conway.
Thank you for your comment. Based on the vignette of “Those Who Don’t”, I assume that Darius is surrounded by tough people and a challenging neighborhood. From the point of view of people outside Mango street: “ Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared” (28). In my opinion, he’s just an innocent boy that has been influenced by inappropriate role models and innocuously absorbed misbehavior. I agree that he is seeking beauty, pleasantness, and goodness in his life, in addition to family and a welcoming neighborhood.
Hi Kannikar, I really enjoyed reading your response! As a kid I remember playing the game where we would try to call out which cloud looked like an animal with my friends and then we would just start naming random things. I loved that quote as well “happiness is not about getting everything that you want, it is about enjoying all you have in the moment.” I thought about that quote as well many times in my life actually. It’s important to be grateful for what we have, especially in todays society with social media and entertainers flaunting expensive things. There’s much more to life than that and I think this message is very beautiful!
Hi Florijana Bicaj, thank you for your comment. I love that quote, especially the cheerful message from the poet. It lifts my soul during bad days. I agree with you that our society is full of flaunting life on social media. It’s nothing but an illusion.
Kannikar, I think the language of this vignette is amazing. While reading this I was able to see vivid pictures in my head of the words, which helped me understand the text even more. I think it’s very interesting to think of clouds as hope, or a sense of natural beauty. When having these thought it takes me back to my childhood when I had the purest thought in my head and didn’t have a care in the world. Looking up at the clouds always made me feel free as if I was flying. Your thought on what happiness is about is interesting and I couldn’t agree more. I enjoyed reading your analysis of this vignette.
Hi Stuart Campbell, thank you for your comment. I agree that the thoughts when we were a child were so pure and less complicated. Happiness was so basic. Even just looking at the sky could easily put a smile on our innocent face.
Kannikar, I very much enjoyed reading your beautiful interpretation of the vignette “Darius & the Clouds.” It is the vignette that is just before the one I selected, “And Some More.” Both sketches are thematically linked around their shared symbolism of clouds. More accurately, I should probably say “presumed symbolism.” I gave a lot of thought around these two vignettes in trying to determine the author’s intended symbolism of the clouds. However, I admit I am still unsure of what exactly they represent. I appreciated your observation of “beautiful natural imagery contrasting with the sadness in her childhood surroundings.” In the interactions with Darius, I agree with your reading that the character can be “stupid and wise at the same time.” I also thought it was interesting that Esperanza is seeing Darius in a different way than she did before, finding new things to appreciate about him. I think this also shows her growth and maturity in relating to people in new ways and finding beauty in their uniqueness and individuality.
Thank you for your comment Karl, I was hesitating to choose between these two vignettes too but eventually the vignette of “Darius & the Clouds” made the strongest impression on me. I also love the point that the poet shows the gradual development of young Esperenza’s perspective to the humans around her. The way she realizes the sensitive side of bratty Darius shows the multiple characteristics of humanity. Sometimes we quickly stereotype people and judge them without knowing much about their background.
I enjoyed the vignettes. It was an exciting way of reading a coming of age story or an autobiography. I chose to focus on the first vignette in the series, entitled The House on Mango Street. I believe everyone’s life events are relative. This vignette, to me, represents what many people outside of the dominant culture go through as they strive to obtain better lifestyles for themselves and their families. I strongly think how we interpret what our parents tell us, the things that happen within our households, and what we remember from our childhood have the most significant impact on how we evaluate life, especially at a young age. The effect of a 12-year-old girl dealing with the cultural norms of her Mexican heritage and trying to fit into a different culture has to be stressful.
Living in poverty and hoping her parents would eventually attain “the American Dream” of owning a beautiful house is probably emotionally devaluing to a young pre-teen. Especially since the places they lived were not attractive, and the nun passing by kept pointing to the house disdainfully “saying you live there.”
Considering that the author was also becoming a young woman, whose family moved from place to place, and between the United States and Mexico could have easily made her feel displaced and undervalued. Being forced to move to the House on Mango Street because “the water pipes broke and the landlord would not fix them” was a telltale sign that her family had a lot of obstacles to overcome. The other part of the story that affected me was that Esperanza believed her parent’s when they described the house dream house that they would move into while telling the children a bedtime story. I think the description was vivid in her imagination. The reality of the house they moved into was nothing like the parents described, and she despised it although it had working pipes, running water, and some better features. It was not what she believed nor imagine. I think one of the worst pains children feel is thinking they have been lied to by a parent. It is hard for them to separate their parent’s dream’s from what is a family necessity. It was good to learn that the author found her voice and was able to write about her experiences. I think this was a good story about overcoming a lack of self-worthiness and finding your voice for any person or woman.
Lisa, yes, I love these vignettes too as a well of telling a life story. The book is like a combination of memoir, novel, and poem. It’s interesting to me that this very young girl has a sense of wanting more. For her parents, owning a house is surely a big achievement, but we can see that Esperanza is not impressed with this and doesn’t believe the living situation is only temporary. She has big dreams!
Hi Professor Conway. Thank you for your comments. I can envision Esperanza wanted more at a very young age, and agree she was certainly not impressed with their new home nor the temporary living situation.
Lisa, The house on Mango Street is one of the vignettes that I like. Truly, Esperanza believed the parents when they told her about their dream house, white house with a lot of space and bathrooms. She must be very disappointed when the moved to one bedroom and one bathroom house. She did not believe them again when they told her it’s just a temporary one. She was hoping to move to a real house ever since the nun made her ashamed about where she lived. However, the family owns this house and they would not have problems with landlords anymore. Thank you
Lisa, I like that you pointed out the detail “the water pipes broke and the landlord would not fix them” brought up in the context of the American Dream and the lack of resources available to people based on socioeconomic status. It brings up the issues of rentals that affect those of lower socioeconomic status in addition to the more broad issues experienced by minorities and notably immigrants that begins with living conditions. I’ve seen this in more a literal sense in my own living experience across two different boroughs that are largely segregated. When I lived in Brooklyn, the landlord would not fix anything and although there was a super, he was never available to help. When our apartment had a massive infestation of cockroaches, we had no help from the building. Now, we live in a more affluent neighborhood, mostly white, and people were always coming around to fix things and help. The living standards expected for different groups of individuals is one that is perpetrated by larger societal issues. It is a short story packed with meaning, everything in each vignette is carefully packed with meaning whether it initially feels important or not. I always have a special appreciation for short, meaningful books for this reason. Cisneros crafts every line with purpose, constructing her vignettes economically.
The vignette that resonated with me most in “The House on Mango Street” was “Laughter” on page 17. The central idea is how different she looks like from her sister Nenny but they have many traits in common. She shows how connected they are when she notices a house that looked and felt familiar to the houses in Mexico. Rachel and Lucy did not get it but Nenny turns to agree with her because she understands that same feeling. This brought a smile to my face because I am Albanian from Kosovo and whenever I drive around with my 2 sisters, we do the same exact thing when passing houses that look like Kosove. I can relate to the feeling they both must have had; your heart feels heavy because you miss it back home yet happy because it just looks so beautiful. I can also relate between Esperanza and Nenny when they say they do not look alike however their laugh is just the same; yet again this is my oldest sister and I. She has dark brown hair and brown eyes whereas I have light dirty-blonde hair and blue eyes. We do not look alike at all however you cannot tell our laughter apart, loud and obnoxious!
Florijana, I smiled too reading your post here. I love how you describe the laughter of you and your sister: loud and obnoxious. It’s so funny and so honest and shows how on that deep level, where humor comes from, you and your sister are very much alike. Only you and your sister would be able to see those houses that remind you of Kosovo and share the same feelings.
Hi Florijana, I am Kannikar Sanrak. I enjoy reading your beautiful and fun experiences that relate to the theme of the vignette, Laughter, in the story of The House on Mango Street. I agree with you that the scene when Esperanza and Nenny have the same agreement that a house on the street looks like a house in Mexico City because they’ve experienced several short trips in Mexico due to family reasons. I wish I had a sister too. Luckily, I have a friend who is close enough to count as one of my family members. One time, we traveled to South Korea and walked past a small restaurant that had decorations that appeared to represent a Thai style. We naturally looked at each other and said the same thing about the restaurant that it is similar to restaurants in Thailand. Other friends from Korea wouldn’t understand this observation.
The vignette “Boys and Girls” from “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros made great impression on me. The narrator notes that the boys and girls live in a separate worlds. Esperanza talks about how the boys and girls do not socialize with each other in the community. She uses the brothers as an example. She notes that she can talks to the brothers when they are inside the house but they do not want to talk to her outside. She experiences gender disparity from childhood. Her brothers are best friends but her younger sister, Nenny, is too young to be friend. But she has no choice she must socialize with her. She can not allow her to play with Vargas kids or she will become just like them. Esperanza feels it is her responsibility to take care of Nenny. She wants to have a best friend who will understands hers jokes and they can share secrets. For now she compares herself to a red balloon tied to an anchor. What interest me more is this quote: “Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor” (9). Esperanza feels her younger sister has become her anchor and she can only have a best friend when Nenny is old enough to take care of herself. The color red stands out and the image of the balloon suggests floating. To my understanding, Esperanza stands out in her neighborhood but, due to her anchor she is just floating around she has nowhere to go.
The vignette that stood out to me in” The House on Mango Street” was “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired In the Dark”. This vignette stood out to me because I can relate to this situation. This vignette is about Esperanza who’s the oldest of the children waking up to her farther bring bad news of death in the family. She explained how she had never seen her farther cry, and dramatically explained how he fell to the floor in tears because of sadness. This resonated with me because I have been put in the same situation with my grandmother. To see the person you look up to cry is a painful experience to endure. Esperanza is the oldest so her job is to explain the bad news to her younger siblings. She is tasked with the heavy burden of telling the younger ones why they can’t play, or have fun because of the tragic news of the lost of there loved one. Esperanza also has a moment to herself to think about how she would feel if her own farther was to die. She has these thoughts while holding her father close to her. I think we all can relate to this situation, the thought of loosing a loved one is a very hard to grasp. Especially if this is your mother, farther, or someone you are very close to. I think during the time Esperanza was hugging her farther this was her way of saying I love you without words.
Hi Stuart, I also picked “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired” this vignette resonated with me as well, particularly when seeing my dad cry, when his dad passed away, and as you said, “To see the person you look up to cry is a painful experience to endure.” It is painful, especially when you don’t know how to help them. As the oldest child, it must have been challenging for Esperanza to comfort everyone. Her father, crying and probably her brothers and sisters for she had to tell them the bad news.
The discussion board for this week is a Book called the house on Mango Street. When I read the story, the part that gives me a deep memory is that they are wearing high heels and trying to grab the boy’s attention in the neighborhood. One day a man asked them to kiss him then they realized how dangerous it is to become a grown-up woman. They quickly run home and hide in high heels. This part of the story grabs my attention it is because to me it looks like a group of kids wants to growing up fast and go out and see the real world after they saw the real world how dangerous it is they want to hide it and avoid to growing up they are afraid to enter the adult world that’s how I see this part of the story when I know this part everyone has a different translation this is my translation.
I enjoyed reading the vignettes. The vignette that stood out to me the most in “The House on Mango Street” was “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark.” This vignette is about Esperanza’s dad entering her room and tells her that her abuelito has passed away. At that moment, she sees her dad crying, she never seen him cry, and she doesn’t know what to do. But she puts herself in his situation and thinks of how she would feel if her father passes away, so she holds him to comfort him. Esperanza, being the oldest child, she would have to tell the news to her siblings. She mentions the things she would have to say to them, “I will have to explain why we can’t play. I will have to tell them to be quiet today.” (57). This quote and vignette stood out to me. When I was younger, my father’s parents passed away, it was hard for me to see him cry and break down because I’ve never seen him that way. Although, just like Esperanza, I hold my dad and tell him to know its ok. At that time in my life, when someone passes away, we don’t listen to music or play for ten days as we mourn the passing of a loved one.
Hey Christie, I really enjoyed your reading. Firstly, I am really sorry to hear the death of your grandfather. Personally speaking, this vignette has really a lot of thing in common with my life. This vignette shows us the responsibility of every oldest child in the family. The last sentence of this vignette is so heart touching, “And I think if my own papa died what would I do”. This line made me realize the role our parents play in our lives.
A Vignette is describe as neither a plot nor a full narrative description, but a carefully crafted verbal sketch that might be part of some larger work, or a complete description in itself. The vignette that caught my attention the most was called Hairs. In this short vignette, the author describes the hair texture and quality of each family. it interest me for a few reasons. One being the fact that it held my attention longer than most of the other stories. My attention was held be cause the central focus was their hair and not too much fluff was given in between to sway my attention. Another reason this stood out to me was because the way each character hair was described i envisioned how it would look in real time and even made me think of my own. Some of the other vignettes rely on too much on heavy descriptions and tend to lose me partway through the reading but this one kept me focus and interested.
I enjoyed reading this week’s reading “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros. I enjoyed reading her writing style, especially the poetic language she starts every chapter with. Reading the story brought back my early childhood memories. The leading character Esperanza resonates to me, I still remember how my parents always complained about my uncontrolled inquisitiveness. In the vignette “The Family of Little Feet” it brings back memories when I was in second grade with my mother’s high heels and makeup. In the vignette of “A Rice Sandwich” Esperanza’s inquisitiveness to explore the school’s canteen just because the name sounds important to her relates to my inquisitiveness when I was young against the advice of the adults around me. I don’t really know if all the girls are like Esperanza or is it just me. Reading The House on Mango Street I couldn’t keep myself from laughing loudly , I don’t know if I was laughing at Esperanza or laughing at myself.
The vignette entitled, “My Name” stood out to me because it truly captures the oppression that Esperanza faces from two ends, from white society and her womanhood within her family and community. The House on Mango Street provides a coming of age story that speaks to life for minorities in the United States, but especially for women both in the US and within their own communities. In this vignette, the narrator explores her conflicted sense of identity and anxieties surrounding it, starting with something as simple as having a spanish name in a largely English-speaking country and school. She explains that in English, her name means hope, but it is not seen that way by her classmates, who do not say it correctly. It develops ideas about the American Dream and its immense shortcomings that she was continually confronted with from a young age. She introduces the stark contrast between how her name is said in english and spanish: “At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver” (Cisneros 11). Her spanish name is a burden in her school but she describes the way her name is said by spanish as beautiful. Although she appreciates her name, she says she wants to “baptise myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees… Something like Zeze the X will do” (Cisneros). I think it is interesting what she says she wants her name to be. Even in her young age, and within her shame, she has a strong sense of self. Esperanza, or Zeze the X is a name of her own creation, of her own ideas about who she is and who she wants to be. She doesn’t want her name to be something like Kate or Mary or Emily. Her goal is not to fit in but to create her own ideas about herself and form her own place in the world, to not feel trapped, waiting for her life to get better. She looks for something else, for an identity that is not jealousy to be like the white kids, but better, something that she hopes for but does not want to look out the window and wait for something to spontaneously appear over the horizon; she sees the sorrows of the women who were not able to escape the identities that they fell into and could never leave their positions by the window, waiting. Like her great-grandmother, whose name she inherited. Esperanza wants to create her own place in the world. The nuances that Cisneros develops of Esperanza’s character in her struggle and appreciation of her culture help to bring her character to life.
The vignette which made good impression on me is the “Boys and Girls”. The theme of this vignette is that due to gender difference, the boys and girls “live in separate worlds” in her society. For instance, Esperanza brothers don’t speak to her outside of the house just because she is a girl but they do talk when are at home. Esperanza realizes this gender differences in her neighborhood and that’s why she was very desperate to find a best friend of her own one day with whom she can share all her secrets. However, Esperanza can only socialize to Nenny, but she is too young to be her friend. So, until then without such a best friend she compares herself with a red balloon “tied to an anchor” which symbolizes her strict life in Mango street from which she wants to escape one day.
The vignette “Hairs” from The House on Mango Street made the strongest impression on me. It is short however it speaks of many different hair types within one family. The narrator describes her mother’s hair, the aroma of her hair and how she feels when she embraces her. She compares this personal memory with the smell of fresh bread and the warmth of the bed warmed from her mother’s body heat. The reason this one leaves an impression on me, is because I can picture everything she describes, her father “hair like a broom, all up in the air”(6), “Carlos hair is thick and straight” (6). In my family we all have different types of hair hence why this vignette leaves more of a personal, relative impression on me. My daughter always speaks of feeling so at easy that she falls asleep while I comb her hair and always comments about my body heat the same way the narrator speaks of the warmth of her mother from her mothers side of the bed. Therefore, this vignette left an impression on me.