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Dramatic Irony in "The Earl of Tennessee"

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Dramatic Irony in "The Earl of Tennessee"

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In "The Earl of Tennessee", we see a big example of dramatic irony with Earl and Esperanza: "We never agree on what [his wife] looks like, but we know this." We know that the women going inside his house are prostitutes, but Esperanza does not know this. This exemplifies the theme of culture, as people like Earl are the common resident of Mango Street.

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Situational Irony in "Cathy Queen of Cats"

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Situational Irony in "Cathy Queen of Cats"

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Throughout the vignette, "Cathy Queen of Cats", Cathy describes her life as if she is above Esperanza and everyone living on Mango Street. Cathy says "That's when we move away. Got to. Then as if she forgot I just moved in, she says the neighborhood is getting bad" (Cisneros 13). Since Esperanza's family just moved in Cathy is using her as an example of why she needs to move. Cathy's family, who also lives on Mango Street isn't much different than Esperanza's.

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Simile in "Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut and Papaya Juice on Tuesdays"

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Simile in "Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut and Papaya Juice on Tuesdays"

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In this vignette, we see Rafaela compare herself to Rapunzel. "Rafaela leans out the window and leans on her elbow and dreams her hair is like Rapunzel's." This simile is comparing Rafaela to Rapunzel. This furthers the theme of culture because Rafaela, like Rapunzel, is locked away and wants to be saved; this is something all married women on Mango Street feel and relate to.

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Repetition in "papa who wakes up tired in the dark"

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Repetition in "papa who wakes up tired in the dark"

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there is repetition in this vignette by when Esperanza says "I hold and hold and hold him"

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Sensory details in "Minerva Writes Poems"

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Sensory details in "Minerva Writes Poems"

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In this vignette, Cisneros appeals to our sense of smell using sensory details. "little pieces of paper that smell like a dime" the author uses the example of a dime to help us better imagine the poems

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Throughout the novel Esperanza observes other Hispanic people who struggle to stay true their Hispanic roots while at the same time trying to adapt to American culture.

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Culture Theme Evidence in "Those Who Don't"

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Culture Theme Evidence in "Those Who Don't"

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In "Those Who Don't" Esperanza compares the stereotypes the white people have against hispanics and that hispanics have against white people. She says, "They think we're dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives" (Cisneros 28). Here Esperanza is appalled about how white people stereotype her before even knowing her or other hispanics. On the contrary, Esperanza also states, "But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight" (Cisneros 28). Esperanza is acknowledging the fact that the stereotyping goes both ways, no one is better than the other.

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"Marin, under the streetlight, dancing by herself, is singing the same song somewhere. I know. Is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life." This quote develops the theme of culture by expressing how Marin is waiting for a boy to take her away. On Mango Street, the women are very dependent on their husbands, and this idea is started very early on, as we see with Marin.

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verbal irony is used in this vignette by when Esperanza's mother says "i could have been somebody but i dropped out of high school because of my clothes." "i was a smart cookie then." Esperanza's mother confesses that she quit school when she was young because she didn't have nice clothes

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I think this theme is very important to the novel, as it is one of the themes that occurs the most. This theme is not only to the Cisneros, but also to the world, because there are many neighborhoods like this in the world that often go ignored, and stories like this that focus so heavily on it shed light on these important issues.

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The red balloon represents Esperanza being tied down to her cultural roots.

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In addition to what was already said, this theme also about growing up in poverty and how that can affect different people.

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Esperanza in the Vignette "Hairs" describes how everyone in her family has different types of hair that relates to their personality. 

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Esperanza in the Vignette "Hairs" describes how everyone in her family has different types of hair that relates to their personality. 

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Culture with Esperanza in "The House on Mango Street"

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Culture with Esperanza in "The House on Mango Street"

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In "The House on Mango Street", Esperanza's poverty affects how she thinks and what she wants. This is especially prevalent when the nun makes comments on Esperanza's house. "You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there." Esperanza's poverty makes her feel very ashamed, and after this situation she starts thinking about the house she wants to have when she gets older.

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Culture has a big impact on Esperanza's life experiences. Cisneros' story shows the difficulties minorities face in society. Reading about Esperanza's life has open my eyes to more ways our world needs improvement.

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"In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting." this occurs before Esperanza says her name for the first time. Esperanza’s characterization of her name shows how she channels her dissatisfaction with her given name into creativity and word play. What Esperanza says here about the word esperanza is neither intuitive nor true. In Spanish, esperanza means “hope.” The word does not have a dictionary definition in English.

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Simile in "There Was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn't Know What to Do"

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Simile in "There Was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn't Know What to Do"

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Cisneros describes an accident Angel Vargas has by saying, "...the day Angel Vargas learned to fly and dropped from the sky like a sugar donut, just like a falling star, and exploded down to earth without even an "oh"" Cisneros 30). She describes a boy falling off a roof as if he was a shooting start that no one noticed.

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Cisnero describes Esperanza's neighborhood by saying "those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood sacred. They think we are dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knifes. All brown all around, we are safe.

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In this interview Cisneros is asked to reflect on her mixed cultural upbringing. Watch from 1:13 - 2:40

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Well, you know what? People know me from my first book, but I don't mind that. That's my child. That's my first-born child.

And I have written many other books since then, and people love my first-born child, but it's been around on the planet longer than others, so people have had more time to work with that one. And I don't feel restricted or constricted with that book.

I feel as if it's my eldest child and he went to work and is earning money for his mom, and that's perfectly fine, so I can take care of the other kids.

(LAUGHTER)

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Sandra Cisneros looks back as a writer in search of home

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Writer Sandra Cisneros has spent her entire life searching for a sense of belonging, a search chronicled in a new essay collection, "A House of My Own: Stories From My Life." She sits down with Jeffrey Brown at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington to discuss her book, her life as a writer and her journey to find home.

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Do you think Esperanza's mixed cultural childhood affected her in a good way?

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In this blog post, Cisneros talks about her life.

http://english380asandracisneros.blogspot.com/2011/03/cultural-significance-of-author.html

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Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954, the only daughter in a family of seven children. Traveling back and forth between Mexico and the United States as a child imbued a sort of outsider's perspective in her writing; once unable to see herself as a full member of either nation, she now embodies the cultural blending of the Chicano/a movement. Cisneros received her M.F.A from the University of Iowa in 1978, and she has worked in the field of academia as a creative writing instructor, counselor to high school drop outs, college recruiter, arts administrator, and visiting writer for many prestigious universities ( . In an interview with Knopfgroup Publishing, Cisneros stresses the importance of education as a means for women to secure a writing space of their own through economic independence. She advises all young writers "to go to school and to get as much of an education as possible. I think its very difficult to become a writer without the education;" to further that end she founded and presides over the Macondo Foundation, "an association of socially engaged writers working to advance creativity, foster generosity, and honor our communities" ("Writing," ). She is also founder and president of the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation, a grant-giving institution for Texas writers

Cisneros has published two full length poetry books, the Mountains & Plains Booksellers' Award collection of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories was awarded the PEN Center West Award for Best Fiction of l99l, the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, and was selected as a noteworthy book of the year by The American Library Journal , and nominated Best Book of Fiction for l99l by

Cisneros's refreshing use of language and unique writing style have garnered numerous awards. In 1995, she was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Not satisfied, she "subsequently organized the Latino MacArthur Fellows - Los MacArturos - into a reunion focusing on community outreach" ( ). She has also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Loyola University; an honorary Doctor of Letters from the State University of New York at Purchase; two National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships for fiction and poetry, l988, l982; the Roberta Holloway Lectureship at the University of California, Berkeley; the Chicano Short Story Award from the University of Arizona; the Texas Institute of Letters Dobie-Paisano Fellowship; and an Illinois Artists Grant, l984. In 2003 she was given the Texas Medal of the Arts (

Cisneros's works have been translated into multiple languages, including Spanish, Galician, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, and, recently, into Greek, Iranian, Thai, and Serbo-Croatian ( ). Her prose has global appeal: while her novels brim with Mexican references, her treatment of larger themes-love, family ties, female suffering-speak to the commonality of human experience. She is one of the few Chicano/a author to be seen as hugely commercially viable by her publishers- is the "first Chicana/o novel to appear in Spanish without the condition of first becoming a bestseller in English" (Gutierrez y Muhs 23). The translated Spanish edition sold 13,000 copies in its first six months in bookstores, a groundbreaking number when compared to the dismal sales of typical Spanish translations in the 1990s (23).

Indeed, many critics see her as the defining female voice of the Chicano/a movement, the first woman who made the Latino community accessible to outsiders. In her criticism, "Sandra Cisneros and Her Trade of the Free Word" Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs asserts that, in the skilled hands of Cisneros, the Chicano "traverses languages, stages, cultures, and systems of mainstreaming values where pop culture, past and present, is inscribed and differential articulations of racialized notions of skin color and cultural icons are exhibited" (34).

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Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954, the only daughter in a family of seven children. Traveling back and forth between Mexico and the United States as a child imbued a sort of outsider's perspective in her writing; once unable to see herself as a full member of either nation, she now embodies the cultural blending of the Chicano/a movement.

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Visual Element in "Louie, His Cousin, & His Other Cousin"

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Visual Element in "Louie, His Cousin, & His Other Cousin"

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In this vignette, Louie's other cousin steals a Cadillac, a common occurrence in Mango Street, proved by the fact that it didn't phase Esperanza in the slightest when he was arrested.

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Where do you think the similarities between Cisneros and Esperanza started? Where did it end? Why do you think it was similar or different in those parts?