A House of My Own: Stories from My Life (2015) is a memoir by Sandra Cisneros. Cisneros is one of the most popular and celebrated Latina authors.
Mango Street är en underbar bok! Den kommer jag absolut att använda i min undervisning, det finns hur mycket som helst att arbeta med; många teman och så språket, förstås. När man läser varje vignette är det endast fantasin som sätter stopp för alla olika sätt man skulle kunna arbeta med texterna. Mer idéer tro jag man kan hitta här:
A House Of My Own Sandra Cisneros Pdf Download
- Sandra cisneros moms name. Sandra Cisneros Biography Chicago Public Library - Gallery movie teen thumb young.
- Sandra Cisneros. Penghargaan, seperti: Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, Loose Woman, Caramelo, dan A House of My Own: Stories from My Life.
- Get all the key plot points of Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street on one page. From the creators of SparkNotes.
Carole A Peppleton’s essay and lesson plan (här på bloggen)
Ordförklaringar som kan behövas i undervisningen har jag kopierat här, liksom div. material från olika källor:
Källa: Cliffnotes:
1 The House on Mango Street; Hairs; Boys & Girls; My Name
Year of the Horse Chinese designation of a specific year within a 12-year cycle, used (like sun signs in Western astrological lore) to predict things about people born in those years. This pinpoints Esperanza’s birth year as 1954.
Lisandra A feminine variation of Alessandro (Alexander); Esperanza’s choice here is arguably “stronger” than the name her parents gave her, derived from a Greek name meaning literally “defender of men”; it is also suggestive of Alexander the Great (356–323 b.c.), a famous Macedonian king and military conquerer. Also, like Magdalena (which can be shortened to “Nenny”), but unlike Esperanza, Lisandra can be shortened to a nickname—Sandy or Sandra.
2 Cathy Queen of Cats; Our Good Day; Laughter; Gil’s Furniture Bought & Sold; Meme Ortiz; Louie, His Cousin & His Other Cousin
marimbas plural of marimba, a musical instrument resembling the xylophone.
“Meme” Meme Ortiz’s nickname seems to be derived from a Spanish word—“memo”—meaning a stupid person or a fool, or perhaps from “memez,” stupidity.
“she wears dark nylons… .” style of dress and makeup that would have been considered sexually provocative
3 Marin; Those Who Don’t; There Was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn’t Know What to Do; Alicia Who Sees Mice
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4 Darius and the Clouds; And Some More; The Family of Little Feet; A Rice Sandwich; Chanclas
frijoles cooked beans; refried beans.
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salamander a limbed, tailed amphibian with a soft, moist skin.
double-dutch or “double Dutch”; a children’s game of jump rope in which two turners swing two ropes simultaneously in a crisscross pattern for the person jumping.
300 Spartans an American movie made in the 1950s about the Battle of Thermopylae (in the Persian War) where, in 480 b.c., a Persian army commanded by Xerxes destroyed a Spartan army led by Leonidas. The Spartans, who held the pass against tremendous odds, became an exemplum of bravery and physical courage.
chanclas (Spanish) plural of chancla, a type of open shoe.
“that boy who is my cousin by first communion or something el” nonsense; “first communion” is what Catholics call the occasion on which a person first receives the sacrament of the Eucharist, usually as a child of about seven, so Esperanza is probably searching for a phrase here (“first cousin once removed,” perhaps) and coming up with the wrong one, maybe suggested by the fact that she is at a party held in a church basement and celebrating a sacrament
5 Hips; The First Job; Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark; Born Bad; Elenita, Cards, Palm, Water
Tahiti one of the Society Islands, in the South Pacific; perhaps Lucy (or whoever says this) is thinking about the Polynesian dances performed by Tahitians.
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merengue a fast dance that originated in the Dominican Republic.
tembleque (Spanish) a trembling fit; “the shakes”—i.e., delirium tremens.
“Engine, engine number nine… .” a very old jump-rope rhyme.
abuelito (Spanish) a familiar diminutive of abuelo (grandfather).
está muerto (Spanish) he is dead.
Joan Crawford an American movie actress, most popular in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.
“the sickness… .” Aunt Lupe’s illness; apparently Esperanza is somewhat confused about whether her aunt was ill or injured in some sort of accident; what she says about her having been swimming, and the fact that she was paralyzed, suggests that Lupe contracted polio, relatively common in the 1950s and often spread through the use of swimming pools.
The Waterbabies (really, The Water-Babies) a popular novel written for children, first published in 1863, by English novelist Charles Kingsley (1819–75).
los espíritus (Spanish) the spirits.
6 Geraldo No Last Name; Edna’s Ruthie; The Earl of Tennessee; Sire; Four Skinny Trees
A House Of My Own Sandra Cisneros Pdf
“Pretty, too, …” i.e., good to look at; in Latino dialects, “pretty” is an acceptable adjective to be applied to a young man.
“cumbias, salsas, … rancheras… .” Latin dances fashionable in the middle 1960s.
kitchenettes i.e., “efficiency” apartments; small apartments consisting basically, apart from a bathroom, of a single room with a kitchenette.
babushka a headscarf folded into a triangle and tied under the chin.
Marlon Brando an American movie actor, first popular in the 1950s.
“The Walrus and the Carpenter” a “nonsense” poem from Through the Looking-Glass (a sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) by Lewis Carroll (1832–98).
45 records seven-inch recorded vinyl disks to be played on a phonograph at 45 rpm (rotations per minute); each usually has a three-to-four minute song recorded on each side.
Part Seven – No Speak English; Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut & Papaya Juice on Tuesdays; Sally; Minerva Writes Poems; Bums in the Attic
“Mamasota” “Big mama,” emphasizing the woman’s obesity.
fuchsia a purplish-red color.
“¿Cuándo?” (Spanish) “When?”
“¡Ay, caray!” (Spanish) an expression of exasperation, something like “Damn it!” or “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
Rapunzel a princess in a fairy tale of European origin, imprisoned by a witch; her hair is very long, and the prince who comes to call on her climbs up to her tower by means of her hair.
Part Eight – Beautiful & Cruel; A Smart Cookie; What Sally Said; The Monkey Garden; Red Clowns
Madame Butterfly a character in the opera Madama Butterfly, by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924).
comadres (Spanish) women friends, girlfriends (to another woman).
Rip Van Winkle a character in a tale (“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”) by American writer Washington Irving (1783–1859).
Part Nine – Linoleum Roses; The Three Sisters; Alicia & I Talking on Edna’s Steps; A House of My Own; Mango Street Says Goodbye Sometimes
“One night a dog cried … .” a traditional harbinger of death; a bird flying into a house, too, is supposed to foretell a death in the house.
* * *
The House on Mango Street is a deceptive work. It is a book of short stories—and sometimes not even full stories, but character sketches and vignettes—that add up, as Sandra Cisneros has written, ”to tell one big story, each story contributing to the whole—like beads in a necklace.” That story is told in language that seems simple but that possesses the associative richness of poetry, and whose slang and breaks from grammatical correctness contribute to its immediacy. It is narrated in the voice of a young girl—a girl too young to know that no one may ever hear her—but whose voice is completely convincing, because it is the creation of a mature and sophisticated writer. For example, The House on Mango Street appears to wander casually from subject to subject—from hair to hips, from clouds to feet, from an invalid aunt to a girl named Sally, who has ”eyes like Egypt” and whose father sometimes beats her. But this apparent randomness disguises an artful exploration of themes of individual identity and communal loyalty, estrangement and loss, escape and return, the lure of romance and the dead end of sexual inequality and oppression.
The House on Mango Street is also a book about a culture—that of Chicanos, or Mexican-Americans—that has long been veiled by demeaning stereotypes and afflicted by internal ambivalence. In some ways it resembles the immigrant cultures that your students may have encountered in books like My Ántonia, The Jungle, and Call It Sleep. But unlike Americans of Slavic or Jewish ancestry, Chicanos have been systematically excluded from the American mainstream in ways that suggest the disenfranchisement of African-Americans. Although Cisneros uses language as a recurring metaphor for the gulf between Mexican-Americans and the majority culture, what keeps Esperanza Cordero and her family and friends locked in their barrio is something more obdurate than language: a confluence of racism, poverty, and shame. It may help your discussion to remind students that the ancestors of many Chicanos did not come to the United States by choice, but simply found themselves in alien territory as a result of the U.S.’s expansionist policy into country that had once been Mexican.
But although The House on Mango Street will have a particularly strong appeal to Latino students, who may never have encountered a book that speaks so pointedly to their own experience, it is a work that captures the universal pangs of otherness—what Cisneros, in her introduction to the tenth anniversary edition (published by Knopf, $18.00), has called ”the shame of being poor, of being female, of being not-quite-good-enough.” It suggests from where that otherness comes and shows how it can become a cause for celebration rather than shame. Few students, regardless of their ancestry or gender, will come away from this book without a strong sensation of having glimpsed a secret part of themselves. For, as Sandra Cisneros has written, ”You, the reader, are Esperanza…. You cannot forget who you are.”
(utdrag) Throughout The House on Mango Street, Cisneros’s narrator describes herself from two points of view: as she sees herself and as she believes others see her. We can find an example of this in ”My Name”: ”At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth.”[11] Where else in the book does Cisneros convey this dual consciousness? How does Esperanza see herself? How does she think other people perceive her?
About Cisneros’ Work
Brief Synopses
* The House on Mango Street
Esperanza Cordero and her parents, sister, and brothers move into a house on Mango Street, after having lived in numerous other locations in Chicago, only some of which Esperanza remembers. At least this latest house is the Corderos’ own, but in other respects, it is not the house Esperanza would have hoped for. Esperanza meets some of her neighbors—Cathy (whose family is about to move out because the neighborhood is going downhill), Lucy and Rachel (two sisters who live across the street), a boy named Tito, another named Meme Ortiz (whose family has moved into Cathy’s house), yet another boy named Louie, Louie’s cousin Marin, and Louie’s other cousin.
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Esperanza gets to know Marin a little better and learns that she is hoping to marry a boy in Puerto Rico but that she is still interested in other boys. Esperanza reflects that people who don’t live in the neighborhood are afraid to come into it, whereas those who live there feel quite safe but are afraid to go into other neighborhoods. She tells about the Vargas kids, whose father left and whose mother can’t control them, and about Alicia, who is going to the university and at the same time keeping house for her father. Esperanza and her friends hang out, looking at clouds, talking idly. A woman gives Esperanza, Lucy, and Rachel three pairs of high-heeled shoes, which they wear around the neighborhood.
Esperanza pleads with her mother to let her take her lunch to school, but when she is allowed to do so, she doesn’t enjoy it. She goes to a baptismal party for a baby cousin and dances with her uncle. She, Nenny, Lucy, and Rachel talk about getting hips, and Esperanza gets her first job, in a photo-developing store. Her grandfather dies in Mexico, her Aunt Lupe dies in Chicago, and Esperanza goes to a fortune-teller who informs her that she will have a home in the heart. At a dance, her friend Marin meets a man who is later injured in a hit-and-run accident; Marin waits in the hospital while he dies. Esperanza describes two neighborhood adults whom she finds interesting: Edna’s daughter Ruthie and a jukebox repairman named Earl. She tells about a boy—Sire—who sometimes stares at her, and talks about her relationship to four trees growing from the sidewalk in front of her house.
Then Esperanza describes two married women she knows—Mamacita, who is very fat, very homesick, and cannot speak English, and Rafaela, who is young and beautiful, and whose husband locks her in their apartment while he goes out to play dominoes with his friends. Sally, who is about Esperanza’s age, makes herself attractive to boys and young men but is mistreated by her father, who is afraid she will run away with some boy or young man. And Minerva (who also writes poems), not much older than Esperanza, has two little children and a husband who leaves her sometimes but then comes back and beats her.
When she has a house, Esperanza says, it will be a big, fine one, and she will let “bums” stay upstairs in the attic. She has decided to be independent, like a man. Her mother tells her that she herself quit school because she was ashamed of her clothes.
Sally’s father beats her so badly that her mother allows her to come and stay with Esperanza’s family, but he comes to get her, begs her to come home with him, and then beats her worse. Esperanza and Sally go to play in an overgrown and deserted garden, but Sally would rather hang out with the boys, and Esperanza embarrasses herself by trying to protect Sally, who doesn’t want to be protected. The two girls go to a carnival, and Sally leaves with a boy; Esperanza, waiting for her to return, is overpowered by several strangers and sexually assaulted by one of them.
Now Sally has married a young man she met at a school function, and he makes her stay in their house and won’t let her friends visit. Lucy and Rachel’s youngest sister, an infant, dies; at their house, Esperanza meets her friends’ three aunts (or, most likely, great aunts), who draw her aside and tell her she is special. When she leaves Mango Street, they say, she must not neglect to come back for those who can’t leave. Her friend Alicia echoes this advice when they talk on Edna’s steps. And, at last, Esperanza says that she will have a house of her own, she will someday leave Mango Street—and, sometimes, writing about it helps her make it leave her — but she will come back for the others.
Themes
Alienation and Displacement
Another important theme in both books is the individual’s feeling of alienation or displacement. Esperanza in Mango Street expresses the feeling often, saying she does not “belong” where she is and that she wishes she were from somewhere else—although Alicia assures her that she “is Mango Street” and will carry it with her when she leaves there.
Individualism versus Cultural Traditions
Both of these themes—that of love-as-power and that of alienation—seem to proceed from the third and larger theme of the individual’s conflict with a tradition that is both cultural and familial. Almost every female character in both books experiences the intensely potent force of this tradition influencing her to follow her Latino family tradition into marriage, when she would cease to “belong” to her father and begin to “belong” to her husband. Most of those who do not resist this force are portrayed as unhappy in the world they inhabit, from Esperanza’s mother, who is “self-alienated” to the extent that she has not been able to utilize her artistic gifts and interests,
Love as Power
The theme of love as power is most apparent in some of the “Woman Hollering Creek” stories, but it appears even in Mango Street, in the lives of Esperanza’s acquaintances and in her own youthful experience. Rafaela, Minerva, Mamacita, and Sally—after her marriage—are all overpowered by their husbands, physically or otherwise, as a matter of course. Whatever the relationship between her own parents, it seems that Esperanza sees a normal love-and-marriage relationship as one in which the man holds and exercises complete power over “his” woman. The only alternative, she believes, would have the woman holding complete power. In “Beautiful and Cruel” she decides that she prefers that option, but a possible relationship in which power is held equally by both partners, a more-or-less equal give-and-take relationship, or even one in which power is not a major factor (or weapon) seems not to occur to her. Interestingly, the love-equals-power relationship is figured here in several instances as visual gaze: Boys stare at Marin, and she boldly returns the gaze; Sire looks at Esperanza, and she affects not to be frightened; women who have been disempowered (or who have never had any power) look out through a window at what they cannot have.
The House on Mango Street is divided into 44 separately titled sections averaging about two-and-one-half pages each. Each of these sections might stand alone; together they work as a novel.
The first four chapters have little or no plot action and minimal—although valuable—exposition: We learn the names of the speaker and her siblings and something about their ages and birth order (Kiki is the youngest of the four, he and Carlos are “best friends”—so it’s a safe guess that Carlos, too, is younger than Esperanza—and Nenny is younger as well, so Esperanza must be the eldest). We learn something about the family’s ethnicity and socio-economic status. But most of what happens in these first four chapters is our introduction to Esperanza.
As the narrator, Esperanza speaks to her audience (the reader) with a total absence of self-consciousness. To whom is Esperanza speaking/writing? Although sometimes she records feelings and impressions in a manner that suggests a private journal or diary, more often she includes information that a diarist (especially a child) would probably deem unnecessary. She will occasionally address other characters directly, but for the most part, what she says and the way she says it suggests that the hearer/reader she has in mind is someone like herself, a girl her own age who does not know her but who understands what she is saying because the two are simpático. In other words, she seems consciously or unconsciously to be addressing the “best friend” she has not yet met.
What Esperanza tells directly about herself here is relatively little; what she tells indirectly is a good deal more informative. First of all, she is at this point a child, although in certain ways, she is older than her years. She still gets in bed with her parents for comfort; she enumerates small differences among family members that prove each is an individual. Part of her self-identity is as an older sister. She feels responsible for guiding Nenny, although there is a lack of sympathy between her and her sister.
Esperanza is also childish in what she selects to tell: not her parents’ names, for example, but only Papa and Mama; not their occupations (something only adults consider important), but how their hair looks. Her disappointment in the “new” house is childish; she tells us very little about it but does not hide her resentment that it is not something better. She is naïve enough to have hoped for her parents’ dream house and childish enough to reveal her disappointment, despite her realization that this is probably not just a temporary move for the family and her attempt to sound sophisticated about that realization.
In at least one way, however, Esperanza is already the woman she will become. She values her strength and her independence (her identification with her great-grandmother); she is someone who makes her own decisions and refuses to be a follower (unlike Nenny, who will become just like the Vargas kids if allowed to play with them). Even the fact that she volunteers very little about herself is indicative of her independence: She keeps her own counsel. Esperanza sees herself as somewhat mysterious. If she could, she would re-baptize herself as “something like Zeze the X,” someone unusual, exotic—and masked.
As readers, we should remember that Esperanza’s real name (chosen by her parents, fictionally, but chosen by Cisneros actually) has value not only as a device for revealing what this protagonist doesn’t like: the sad, old-fashioned Mexican associations it has for her; its passive, “feminine” sound (unlike “Zeze the X”); its harsh consonants when spoken in English; the impossibility of its being shortened into a nickname. Translated into English, Esperanza tells us, her name means “hope,” and of course that is basically what it means. But it shares its Latin root with the English words “spirit” and “aspiration” (something more than mere “hope”: ambition, daring, strong desire), both of which, like the Spanish word “esperanza,” derive from a word meaning breath. The spirit that animates this protagonist is what distinguishes her. Until she has a “best friend,” she says (meaning, until she is able to choose a friend, as she cannot choose her family, for being a child is by definition being unable to choose), she will be like a balloon on a tether, unable to rise with the spirit that fills her.