A House Of My Own Sandra Cisneros

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A House Of My Own Sandra Cisneros Pdf Download

The House On Mango Street: SeekingIndependence Essay, Research Paper

In the book TheHouse on Mango Street, author Sandra Cisneros presents a series ofvignettes that involve a young girl, named Esperanza, growing up inthe Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza Cordero is searching for arelease from the low expectations and restrictions that Latinosociety often imposes on its young women. Cisneros draws on her ownbackground to supply the reader with accurate views of Latino societytoday. In particular, Cisneros provides the chapters ?Boys and Girls?and ?Beautiful and Cruel? to portray Esperanza?s stages of growthfrom a questioning and curious girl to an independent woman.Altogether, ?Boys and Girls? is not like ?Beautiful and Cruel?because Cisneros reveals two different maturity levels in Esperanza;one of a wavering confidence with the potential to declare herindependence, and the other a personal awareness of her own actionsand the decision to take action and wage her ?own quiet war (Cisneros89).

A House Of My Own Sandra Cisneros Pdf Download

Get all the key plot points of Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street on one page. From the creators of SparkNotes. Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own. It’s okay to yearn for true love even when you’re still healing (2020). .mother' in a house of her own, Cisneros asserts her most confident identity—one that is comfortable with the contradictions of living in two cultures. Idk what to really put on here?? Describing yourself is hard, anyways hi and I hope you have a great day.

Author SandraCisneros was born in 1954 in the Latino section of Chicago (Encarta1). Cisneros is an ?American novelist, short-story writer, essayist,and poet (Encarta 1).? Her works have brought the perspective of theMexican American woman into the ?mainstream of literary feminism(Encarta 1).? She earned her Bachelor?s Degree from Loyola Universityin 1976 and her Master?s Degree from the University of Iowa in 1978(Encarta 1). The House on Mango Street is Cisneros? first novel, and?is her most critically acclaimed (Encarta 1).? The novel isconstructed with a ?series of short interconnected chapters (Encarta1).? Cisneros writes of the ?hopes, desires, and disillusionments ofa young writer growing up in a large city (Encarta 1).? After readingThe House on Mango Street, the reader is left with a greater sense ofthe everyday oppressions the ?roles created for women in Hispanicsociety (Encarta 1).? Cisneros decides to accept the oppression aspart of culture, but also detach from this view by telling women, oldand young alike, to find their own independence. Cisneros usesEsperanza as a vehicle to express the power of womanhood anddetermination to reach certain goals.

In ?Boys andGirls,? Cisneros introduces a gender separation that dominatesEsperanza?s experiences. Esperanza is dissatisfied that she and heryounger sister Nenny are paired as playmates; Nenny is ?too young tobe my friend (Cisneros 8).?

Esperanza isdependent on her childhood and is like ?a red balloon, a red balloontied to an anchor (Cisneros 9).? This description reveals thatEsperanza singles herself out of her differences, of which she seemskeenly aware. She also considers her differences as a source ofisolation, as she floats in the sky for all to see. She longs toescape, much like a helium balloon. The anchor hinders her flight,similar to the confines that her granted by her society. Cisnerossupplies Esperanza with a small voice, but also with a tone ofwishful thinking, which gives her the ability to be powerful.

?Beautiful andCruel? marks the beginning of Esperanza?s ?own quiet war? againstmachismo (Hispanic culture powered by men). She refuses to neithertame herself nor wait for a husband, and this rebellion is reflectedin her leaving the ?table like a man, without putting back the chairor picking up the plate (Cisneros 89).? Cisneros gives Esperanza aself-empowered voice and a desire for personal possessions, thingthat she can call her own: Esperanza?s ?power is her own (Cisneros89).? Cisneros discusses two important themes: maintaining one?s ownpower and challenging the cultural and social expectations one issupposed to fulfill. Esperanza?s mission to create her own identityis manifest by her decision to not ?lay (her) neck on the thresholdwaiting for the ball and chain (Cisneros 88).? Cisneros? roughlanguage and violent images of self-bondage reveal the contempt withwhich Esperanza views many of her peers whose only goal is to becomea wife. To learn how to guard her power from men, Esperanza looks tothe example of the movie vixen ?with (the) red red lips who isbeautiful and cruel (Cisneros 89).? Esperanza gains strength inherself by accepting the situation she is in as it is, be acquiring adetermination to leave it as week, much like author Sandra Cisneros.

In bothvignettes, Esperanza looks to others for answers, first to the boysin her neighborhood and then to the movie vixen. She does notnecessarily make her own conclusions or solutions to her problem ofdependency to her restrictive culture. In The House on Mango Street,there are some similarities, but more differences that separateEsperanza?s character, as she grows more mature and aware of thesituation that surround her.

In the novel,the reader hears a change in voice, which is the main purpose thatCisneros sets forth. Esperanza first identifies her difficulty withher society, and then accepts and at the same time defies it. In?Boys and Girls? the reader sees a young girl that is investigatingher possibilities in life. In ?Beautiful and Cruel? the reader sees awoman who has become independent from the boundaries of her society.Esperanza is tied down by the ?anchor,? and then casts it off withher refusal to wait for the ?ball and chain.? Esperanza changes froma little girl who makes wishes about her future, to a woman who takesher future in her hands as she begins a ?war? on the limitations thatshe face in her Latino society.

In conclusion,Esperanza makes the ultimate change of becoming independent. AsSandra Cisneros wrote The House on Mango Street, she too furtherrealized her role as an influential woman of her heritage; thisrealization mirrors Esperanza?s journey to womanhood. Esperanza is?alienated from the rest of society in many ways (Hannon 1).? But sheuses this alienation to become ?strong and inspirational (Hannon 1).?Esperanza is a very strong woman in herself. Her goals are ?to notforget her reason for being . . . so as to achieve a freedom that?snot separate from togetherness

Drawing heavily upon her childhood experiences and ethnic heritage Sandra Cisneros (born 1954) creates characters who are distinctly Hispanic and often isolated from mainstream American culture by emphasizing dialogue and sensory imagery over traditional narrative structures.

Born in Chicago, Cisneros was the only daughter among seven children. Concerning her childhood, Cisneros recalled that because her brothers attempted to control her and expected her to assume a traditional female role, she often felt like she had 'seven fathers.' The family frequently moved between the United States and Mexico because of her father's homesickness for his native country and his devotion to his mother who lived there. Consequently, Cisneros often felt homeless and displaced: 'Because we moved so much, and always in neighborhoods that appeared like France after World War II—empty lots and burned-out buildings—I retreated inside myself.' She began to read extensively, finding comfort in such works as Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Cisneros periodically wrote poems and stories throughout her childhood and adolescence, but she did not find her literary voice until attending the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop in the late 1970s. A breakthrough occurred for Cisneros during a discussion of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space and his metaphor of a house; she realized that her experiences as a Hispanic woman were unique and outside the realm of dominant American culture. She observed: 'Everyone seemed to have some communal knowledge which I did not have—and then I realized that the metaphor of house was totally wrong for me. … I had no such house in my memories. … This caused me to question myself, to become defensive. What did I, Sandra Cisneros, know? What could I know? My classmates were from the best schools in the country. They had been bred as fine hothouse flowers. I was a yellow weed among the city's cracks.'

Shortly after participating in the Iowa Workshop, Cisneros decided to write about conflicts directly related to her upbringing, including divided cultural loyalties, feelings of alienation, and degradation associated with poverty. Incorporating these concerns into The House on Mango Street, a work that took nearly five years to complete, Cisneros created the character Esperanza, a poor, Hispanic adolescent who longs for a room of her own and a house of which she can be proud. Esperanza ponders the disadvantages of choosing marriage over education, the importance of writing as an emotional release, and the sense of confusion associated with growing up. In the story 'Hips,' for example, Esperanza agonizes over the repercussions of her body's physical changes: 'One day you wake up and there they are. Ready and waiting like a new Buick with the key in the ignition. Ready to take you where?' Written in what Penelope Mesic called 'a loose and deliberately simple style, halfway between a prose poem and the awkwardness of semiliteracy,' the pieces in The House on Mango Street won praise for their lyrical narratives, vivid dialogue, and powerful descriptions.

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories is a collection of twenty-two narratives revolving around numerous Mexican-American characters living near San Antonio, Texas. Ranging from a few paragraphs to several pages, the stories in this volume contain the interior monologues of individuals who have been assimilated into American culture despite their sense of loyalty to Mexico. In 'Never Marry a Mexican,' for example, a young Hispanic woman begins to feel contempt for her white lover because of her emerging feelings of inadequacy and cultural guilt resulting from her inability to speak Spanish. Although Cisneros addresses important contemporary issues associated with minority status throughout Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, critics have described her characters as idiosyncratic, accessible individuals capable of generating compassion on a universal level. One reviewer observed: 'In this sensitively structured suite of sketches, [Cisneros's] irony defers to her powers of observation so that feminism and cultural imperialism, while important issues here, do not overwhelm the narrative.'

Although Cisneros is noted primarily for her fiction, her poetry has also garnered attention. In My Wicked Wicked Ways, her third volume of verse, Cisneros writes about her native Chicago, her travels in Europe, and, as reflected in the title, sexual guilt resulting from her strict Catholic upbringing. A collection of sixty poems, each of which resemble a short story, this work further evidences Cisneros's penchant for merging various genres. Gary Soto explained: 'Cisneros's poems are intrinsically narrative, but not large, meandering paragraphs. She writes deftly with skill and idea, in the 'show-me-don't-tell-me' vein, and her points leave valuable impressions.' In her poetry, as in all her works, Cisneros incorporates Hispanic dialect, impressionistic metaphors, and social commentary in ways that reveal the fears and doubts unique to Hispanic women. She stated: 'If I were asked what it is I write about, I would have to say I write about those ghosts inside that haunt me, that will not let me sleep, of that which even memory does not like to mention. … Perhaps later there will be a time to write by inspiration. In the meantime, in my writing as well as in that of other Chicanas and other women, there is the necessary phase of dealing with those ghosts and voices most urgently haunting us, day by day.'