Reynolds 1 Parker Reynolds English 11 Mr.

King 10 May 2010 Cultural Conflicts Burritos are composed of many layers of meat, beans, cheese, and veggies. Every one of these layers contributes to and creates the final project. Similarly Sandra Cisneros writing is composed of all the experiences that have shaped her. Whether an autobiographical story or a cautionary tale, Cisneros writing is rich with Chicana culture. In the novel, The House on Mango Street, Cisneros illustrates the journey that a young girl, Esperanza, who struggles with her identity as a Chicana goes through. Esperanza grows up in the barrios of Chicago, daughter to a poor family that has relatively low expectations for her, but she wishes to reach past these expectations. Because Esperanza struggles greatly, fails a few times, and still continues to dream, she eventually rises above the expectations placed on her by her culture by identifying herself as an artist and writer who is also Hispanic. Many people struggle to reach beyond the expectations placed on them, but when one is determined and has a dream, one can achieve remarkable things. The House on Mango Street is a story about taking risks and being willing to let some things go to reach your ultimate goal; One Holy Night, a short story by Cisneros, cautions the reader about what may happen if one is not willing to take the risk of giving up love. Ixchel, the main character, is a young Hispanic girl who meets an older man, Chaq, while working her pushcart and becomes pregnant by this man. She is so in love with Chaq that his baby will forever haunt her and this is her story of innocence and betrayal. Although through Ixchels discovery of love she learns that being given the truth puts you in a position of power, Cisneros shows through Ixchels inability to recognize

Reynolds 2 Chaqs true past that love can overshadow the truth and, in that way, puts the giver of the truth in a position of power. The truth is often complicated, but the power that it has over people is often even more complicated, and, although there are vices that can eclipse the truth, they do not take away the power. Sandra Cisneros writing is heavily influenced by her background as a poor Chicana; nonetheless, her writing encourages people to dream and to reach their dreams: it is necessary to have a strong understanding of who one is and where one comes from, but one must also take risks if one wishes to change ones situation. Sandra Cisneros was the only daughter in a family of six sons in a culture where it was expected that the women fall into the traditional roles of caretaker and housekeeper. Her mother believed that Cisneros should be allowed to pursue her dreams, and, often, her mother was the only one encouraging her. She grew in Chicago going to Catholic schools where the teachers believed that all she could do was be married, have children and run a cash register at a local supermarket (Mirriam-Goldberg 6). Being the only girl in the family, she was often left out of the alliances her brothers formed, so found reading and writing a solace for that. Her mother also encouraged her writing, often allowing her out of doing her chores to read more. In her Notes to a Young Writer, Cisneros compared her reading to vitamins saying she nurtured the writer inside of herself. Her favorite book, among the limited number that she had access to was The Six Swans by Hans Christian Anderson. The book is a version of the ugly duckling story representing her dream to grow up and be pretty and successful. Cisneros initially pushed away her culture and regretted being born into her family. Eventually, though, she learned how to enrich her writing by integrating her culture into her stories. Her first novel, The House on Mango Street, tells the story of a young girl, Esperanza, who is in a situation very similar to that of Cisneros. Esperanza struggles with her identity

Reynolds 3 and initially tries to change who she is, but she eventually learns to integrate her culture into her life so that she can achieve her dreams. There are certain emblems of identity that people use to classify each other and the associations that accompany these can often constrain people. In the beginning of The House on Mango Street Esperanza feels as though her name and the etymology of her name is placing expectations on her that she cannot rise above without changing her name. Esperanza is named after her great grandmother who spent her life sitting, looking out the window, wishing her life was better. Esperanza wonders if she made the best with what she got. Esperanza does not like this etymology of her name saying, I have inherited her name, but I dont want to inherit her place by the window (11). Esperanza sees names as a particularly strong emblem of identity. She establishes early in the novel that she wants to change her name and thus her identity. In The chapter And Some More Esperanza and Nenny, and their friends Rachel and Lucy, are discussing how objects have different names. Esperanza says that there are many different names for clouds and Nenny questions, names just like you and me? (36). Nenny demonstrates a sense of creativity but Esperanza shoots her down saying the scientific term for the specific clouds that day, cumulus. Esperanza views the names of clouds as a way of classifying them that determines whether they are good or bad clouds. During the novel Esperanza is very careful about identifying people by their name and clarifying if and why they have multiple names. Esperanza soon realizes that it is not practical for her to change her name, but in the beginning she is very fixated on what her name means to other people. Depressed by the lives of the other women in her community, Esperanza tries to find a way to push through the expectations placed upon her by her community by controlling the relationship between men and women. As Esperanza grows up and becomes more aware of what is going on around her, she notices that many of the women on Mango Street seem, like her grandmother, to be

Reynolds 4 trapped behind their windows. The first woman that she comes across is Marin. Marins boyfriend is in Puerto Rico and she is doing nothing with her life except gazing from a window. Although Esperanza likes Marin, she says at the end of the chapter Marin that she is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life (27). Esperanza also tells a story about a woman named Rafaela who, when her husband goes out, is locked in her house. She asks the kids to buy her some coconut or papaya juice. Esperanza sees these women whose houses are like jails and wonders if they could have done more to help their situation. By presenting these people as locked behind the bars of their own house, Cisneros reminds the reader that, according to her namesake, Esperanza is destined to do the same and effectively conveys Esperanzas feeling of despair. At this point in her life, Esperanza meets Sally who has a difficult time at home and thus acts out by dressing in a more provocative manner. Esperanza clings on to her because she feels that they have similar wants in life; they wish that their feet would one day keep walking and take [them] far away from Mango Street (82). In the chapter Beautiful and Cruel Esperanza establishes that she has decided to not grow up tame like the others (88), and that she wants to have the power that comes along with that. Although Esperanza makes that bold statement she seems like a very timid girl, and when describing her time at the fair, she says how she was scared to be alone. In the chapter Red Clowns she asks why Sally lied to her and blames her rape on Sally. For Esperanza it is after the rape that she realizes that she is not Sally and pretending to be her will not help her find herself. The rape is an extreme example of the power struggle that consumes Esperanza for the early part of her life. Esperanza eventually finds herself in a positions of power but not because she is no longer a minority but rather because she is different from the majority of people. Writing about what made her different and what shaped her became a very successful signature for Cisneros. The

Reynolds 5 House on Mango Street met with almost immediate success. Marginalized by its ideology, language, and the ethnicity and gender of the author (World Authors), The House on Mango Street was accessible to the public because it tackled relevant topics in a short version that was appropriate for teenagers and thus often used in classrooms. The House on Mango Street is written a series of short vignettes of which Cisneros said, You would understand each story like a little pearl, or you could look at the whole thing like a necklace (Mirriam-Goldberg 54). After completing this novel, Cisneros moved to San Antonio where she found a home encouraging the people of the predominately Latino neighborhood to pursue their dreams. She found San Antonio particularly comforting because it was in the United States but extremely close to Mexico, and she loved how the people there really felt a deep connection to the land and their history (Mirriam-Goldberg 63). Esperanza, like Cisneros, eventually finds this deep connection to her heritage through her writing. At the end of the novel, Esperanza is forced to realize that she will never be able to change the emblems of identity that make her a poor Chicana, but that she can reach beyond those constraints and integrate them into a transcendence past the expectations placed on him. When an older woman comes to visit the neighborhood for a funeral, she says, You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street (105). Esperanza carefully considers this because it is something that she has recently been thinking. Before, Mango Street was more of a constraint, but this older lady does not speak of it in this way. At this point in her life, Esperanza also begins to write and is encouraged to keep writing. Esperanzas aunt Lupe is the first to encourage her, saying, You must keep writing. It will keep you free (61). Her aunt gives Esperanza the last piece of the puzzle but it is not until the last story of the novel, Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes, that Esperanza realizes for herself how her writing will be able to set her free. She has not yet been able to physically leave Mango Street at this point but is able to say of her writing, [Mango] does not

Reynolds 6 hold me with both arms. She sets me free (110). Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes is Esperanzas final revelation, and it is only as powerful as it is because of the way that Cisneros develops Mango Street in the novel. Mango Street is described as a jail and is where all the bad events that happen to Esperanza take place. It has taken all of Esperanzass shortcomings for her to realize that Mango Street is also where all the good events happened and that she does not need to leave it behind or change herself to have her own personal identity. Rather her subsequent growth can be the result of a strong foundation of her culture and experiences. Cisneros learned similar things about her culture, and it is evident in the way that she constantly tries to please her father. Her father was less supportive than her mother and strongly believed that Cisneros should grow up to become someones wife, as culture dictated. She once said that she felt as though she was slowly being erased by her father because of his mistranslation always saying seven sons instead of seven kids (Cisneros, Only Daughter). This attitude of her dad led her to want to show him that something could come of her writing. Her father sent her to college to find a good husband. When he found out that she planned to go on to graduate school, he stopped supporting her. Nonetheless, she wanted to prove herself to him because she felt she owed it to him, saying that although he does not even speak English, everything I have ever written has been for him (Cisneros, Only Daughter). Later on in her life, she went back to her home in Chicago and was able to show her dad a story of hers that was translated into Spanish for an anthology of Chicano literature. After carefully reading the story he said, where can we get more copies of this for the relatives? Cisneros said that that was the single most wonderful thing to happen to her that year (Cisneros, Only Daughter). At college Cisneros, who was initially singled out because of her ethnicity, found that this difference was not a bad thing but rather a gift. After finishing college at Loyola in Chicago, Cis-

Reynolds 7 neros went on to join one of the most prestigious writers conferences in Iowa. When she arrived there she felt completely out of place, and the first year was extremely hard for her. She found that she did not fit in with her classmates because they were mostly from white upper class families. During her time in Iowa she sat through a lecture that helped her find her voice. The lecture was about Gaston Bachelards The Poetics of Space in which he discusses the house as a symbol for peoples inner-selves. She realized during this lecture that all her classmates shared a common understanding of what a house was, whereas she had no idea what a house or home was. At first she became very upset at this, but then she realized that she could do something that her classmates could not do. She began writing about memories that were close to her but foreign to her classmates such as third-floor flats, fear of rats, drunk and abusive husbands (Duarte-Valverde). These are all very traditionally unpoetic and unbeautiful subjects, but she was able to focus not only on these aspects of growing up poor but also the beautiful parts of it. It was during this time that she began to discover and read other multicultural writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Gary Soto, and Toni Morrison. The vignettes she was writing at this point would become The House on Mango Street (Duarte-Valverde). After the House on Mango Street Cisneros did not automatically live a blessed life; rather, she had many more struggles, but she used them to strengthen her writing. In 1987 she was forced to accept a teaching position in California because she could not get a job in San Antonio and could no longer support herself. Being forced to move away from San Antonio led her into a downward spiral of self-doubt which in turn, led to a serious depression. She felt as though her writing and teaching were not good enough to support her, and she refers to this year as the worst year of her life (World Authors). This stage in her life was a time of change and during her depression she was in the middle of a liminal threshold. It took being given a grant to write to pull her out of her

Reynolds 8 depression. After receiving the grant she moved away and began to write more and more. The stories that she wrote in 1987 and after would become Women Hollering Creek. She said that she wrote to deal with her ghosts because she found that by writing she could coexist with that which haunts her (Mirriam-Goldberg 74). This could be a factor in why her writing in Woman Hollering Creek is often dark. This collection is twenty-two cuentitos and focuses on not being considered Mexican, not being considered American, and not being male (Mirriam-Goldberg 79). The completion of this book marked her attainment of the ability to be self-sufficient by being only a writer. One Holy Night in Women Hollering Creek is a cautionary tale and warns people that if one does not take risks, one will always be stuck in a dark place. In order for Ixchel to escape her dark place she would need to transcend to a new stage of her life. This would mean leaving her old sense of truth behind and truly finding herself. Like truth, love is a very complicated emotion and it is not the same experience for everyone. Ixchel loses her virginity to Chaq and thus he shows Ixchel their truth about sex and love, and she feels as if she is put in a position of power by this knowledge. Before she has sex with Chaq, Ixchel has all sorts of fantasies of how it would be: she wants it to come undone like gold thread, like a tent full of birds (28). When she loses her virginity, it is not like that for her; rather, she describes it as a scary experience, one that tears a part of her away. She is not disappointed by this knowledge but, instead she seems empowered: I know I was supposed to feel ashamed, but I wasnt ashamed (30). She goes on to say that she wants to yell from the highest rooftop that she knows (30). She feels empowered by having the knowledge of sex and this empowerment is part of the reason that she loves Chaq so much. At the end of the short story, she shares her knowledge of love with some of her cousins. They all have different experiences with love. Ixchelss view is the most depressing view, but it is also the only one that she believes to be true since her cousins

Reynolds 9 have not had sex and therefore have not experienced love the way she has. She describes love as the crazy man with the harmonica who just walked around all day with his harmonica in his mouth, not playing, just wheezing in and out (35). This view of love shows that she is constantly consumed by her love for Chaq and that instead of being the melody that most people believe it to be, it is actually just a struggle to breathe and live with love. Although Ixchel feels empowered by this view of love, her intense love for Chaq puts her in a position where he has incredible power over her. She will believe whatever he says because she must believe that their truth is real because the other option is her first heartbreak. One of the seven stages of grief is denial, this denial is not exclusive to grief but occurs in many situations where one wishes the truth were different from what it is. Chaq does not completely tell Ixchel the truth about his past life in the beginning of the short story, but even with what she does know, she could figure it out if she wanted to. The story begins with the line, He said his name was Chaq. Chaq Uxmal Paloquin. Thats what he told me (27). By beginning her recount in this way Ixchel is setting up that she only knows what he tells her and that perhaps it is not true. She knows that Chaq is not the truth, but she ignores it during the story because that would mean renouncing their love. She tells of the time that Chaq showed Ixchel his guns by laying them all out on his bed and that there were twenty-four in total. Chaqs explanation was, So youll see who I am,... So youll understand. In complete denial Ixchel narrates, But I didnt want to know (29). At this point in their relationship she does not have all the facts of his past life but the guns alone are enough to point to the fact that he is not the wonderful man descended from Mayan kings that she believes him to be. She is blinded by his fantastical stories and the love that she believes to be true.

Reynolds 10 Although if one gives another the truth it puts the recipient in a position of power, it is up to the recipient to accept the truth. By denying the truth of Chaqs past life, even though she has all the facts in front of her, Ixchel is giving him a power over her that will last forever. Ixchel is unwilling to risk the loss of their love to understand who he really is, and thus she will always be stuck in this dark place. When Ixchel gets the letter from the convent that includes the newspaper clippings that tell about the women that he murdered, she couldnt read but only stare at the little black-and-white dots that make up the face I am in love with (34). She has given Chaq so much power by letting him teach her what love is. She so desperately needs her reality to be true that she refuses to see the truth. When first describing Chaq, Ixchel recalls a time that he said, The truth has a strange way of following you, of coming up to you and making you listen to what it has to say (29). Although Ixchel never truly accepts the truth of Chaqs past, it still haunts her and will continue to for the rest of her life. She has a very hard pregnancy, and the baby is very restless. She seems very scared about when the baby will be born and describes it as almost a monster. When she explains why the baby is so restless, she says, I know its the ghost of him inside me that circles and circles, and will not let me rest (34). This child will forever haunt her because it is, in part, Chaq. In this way Chaq has even more power over Ixchel now, more than if she had just accepted the truth of his past. One Holy Night is set in both Mexico and the United States and because of this crosses the border in-between the two cultures constantly. This is one of the reasons that it is such a successful story. It is also one of the main reasons that Cisneros is such a successful writer; she is able to fluidly live simultaneously in two different cutures. As a young child, Cisneros found her inability to truly fit into only one culture disturbing, but as she grew up she found that writing could bridge the gap between Mexican and American culture. She says that her writing is very important

Reynolds 11 for the Latino community, but it is also very important for the white community: What Im saying in my writing is that we can be Latino and still be American (Mirriam-Goldberg 92). She even has come to such an appreciation of her double culture that she now says, I think that if youre bilingual, youre doubly rich, you have two ways of looking at the world (Mirriam-Goldberg 17). In this respect Cisneros writing is very important to the people of today because it encourages all people, especially the Latino community to dream and reach beyond their stereotypes. It also brings the issues that she speaks about to the forefront of other communities, and so in this respect all her works are very political and stretch the standards of today. Being such a political writer allows her to reach many people and continue to encourage them to dream. Like burritos, Cisneros stories are carefully composed. When one is crafting a burrito one picks what kind of salsa to use, and how many beans to put it in. These decisions, along with countless others, make every burrito its own creation. Similarly Cisneros stories are composed of many layers that make every story a piece of art. These layers draw from her own personal experiences and the culture she grew up in. Cisneros did not have an easy life but that is one of the elements that makes her work so powerful. Drawing from her past Cisneros creates stories to encourage other people to dream and reach beyond the constraints placed on them to achieve all that they can. In her first novel, The House on Mango Street, Cisneros tells a story of a girl who grows up in a scenario very similar to that of Cisneros. Most people come up against obstacles in their life, but the obstacles do not mean that these people can not achieve their dreams rather their end product in enriched because of their struggles. In a very different yet thematically similar short story, One Holy Night, Cisneros cautions her readers about what will happen if they do not take risks. Truth is complicated and sometimes people hide behind their own versoin of reality but this does not release them from the powers of the truth. Like people, Cisneros stories are all different. But at the

Reynolds 12 same time they all stem from Chicana culture, so they have common elements. Cisneros believes and shows through her writing that it is important to understand where you are coming from to become your own person, but that this does not mean that you are constrained; one can still change ones situation if one takes risks.