Swirl of Colors
Sandra Cisneros has spent a lifetime trying to discover her own
literary voice, only to be drowned out by the mostly white and mostly
white voices that she imitated but never identified with. The only
daughter in a family with six sons, Cisneros was often the
"odd-woman-out-forever" (Ganz 21) early on in life. It was not until she
was enrolled in the Iowa Writers Workshop that she finally discovered that
her experience as a woman and a Chicana in a male dominated world was the
voice that was uniquely hers.
Cisneros was influenced by her family's constant travels between
Mexico and Chicago. Cisneros never had the opportunity to make friends
since she was seldom in one place for very long, nor did she have any
sisters to confide and identify with. When her family finally settled in a
small red house in Chicago, Cisneros had a home and a sense of permanence
that she had previously never known. But it was not the house she had
dreamed of nor been promised by her father. She had always thought of a
house with a green lawn, white picket fence, and a bathroom for every
person. Instead she got a dilapidated bungalow in an impoverished
inner-city neighborhood. Cisneros described the house as "an ugly little
house, bright red as if holding its breath" (Ganz 22). It was this house
that inspired her first and most successful novel, The House on Mango
Street.
Cisneros' writing has been shaped by her experiences, which have
given her a perspective and voice very different from traditional American
writers, such as Poe, Thoreau, and Emerson. These are the writers that
have helped comprise the literary cannon of the United States for nearly
two hundred years. She has something to say that they do not know about.
The House on Mango Street is an elegant literary piece, somewhere between
fiction and poetry, that explores issues that are important to her:
feminism, love, oppression, and religion (Mathias 4). In addition to
addressing these issues, Cisneros is also propelling Chicana literature
into the larger macrocosmic white male club that governs the United States
(Lucero-Trujillo 621). One of the tools utilized by Cisneros to achieve
these goals is the use of symbolism in her writing.
The House on Mango Street reads more as poetry than as a
narrative. This is accomplished through the liberal use of color
throughout the vignettes. Nearly every passage in this book contains
reference to color. Specifically then, it is the symbolic use of color
that defines this novel. Even the title of the book brings to mind the
...ted in Quitman County elections and which would have stolen his chance to run for state senate, all orchestrated by Hurst, it’s strange to think about how he might have never eventually become president. It could have been he became disillusioned with the world of politics and decided to just continue on his life as a peanut farmer.
In the novel “Cuban Color in Tourism and La Lucha” the author and anthropologist L. Kaifa Roland describes her journey in Cuba and the different people she encounter with that describe to her the life of a citizen in Cuba. Throughout her stay in Cuba, Roland describes the different situations people go through in Cuba economically and gender wise. She also mainly describes “La Lucha” which in the book is identified as the struggle people face and go through every day in order to get by in Cuba economically. However, the thing that caught my attention the most in the book was how women get mistreated and seen by people differently. Through my paper I am going to be discussing how women in Cuba get discriminated not just by their color or where
In her novel, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings';, Maya states “The black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and the lack of black power';. Fortunately Maya was able to move beyond the crossfire, proving that she overcomes opposition that her status throws her way.
This is most likely due to the fact that she grew up in a poor household but still managed to make a name for herself through her life experiences. They gave her the knowledge to be able to formulate opinions about the relationships among people, particularly between men and women. She is a strong proponent of the belief that God placed humans on earth with the intention to live in a community equally with others. If both men and women were given the same opportunity to prove themselves then who is to say that they cannot be equal to one another? In her eyes, the soul is genderless and should be given an equal chance to be proven so before women are objectified as the weak and fragile. Women have to depend on men because they do not get the same education and knowledge to be able to support
One of the struggles that Esperanza and other Latino women had to face in the U.S. society was equality, which was denied at every level. For example, in the novel women were not appreciated or accepted for their inner beauty but only for what they look like. Esperanza and the women around her were concerned about their appearances because they felt that if they were not attractive then men would not be interested in them. Esperanza and the girls believe that their appearance was the most important. Throughout the novel Cisneros expresses that these women were raised to believe that they needed a man figure to fulfill their life.
Vigil, Ariana. 2009. “Transnational Community in Demetria Martinez's Mother Tongue”. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 10 (1): 54-76
Epilepsy, also known as “seizure disorder,” or “seizure attack,” is the fourth most common neurological disorder known to mankind, affecting an estimated 2.3 million adults and 467,711 children in the United States. Unfortunately this disorder is becoming far more common and widespread worldwide. This staggering number of cases of people suffering from Epilepsy also involves an average growth rate of 150,000 new cases each year in the United States alone. Generally, many of the people who develop who are a part of the new are mainly either young children or older adults. Your brain communicates through chemical and electrical signals that are all specialized for specific tasks. However, through the process of communication, chemical messengers, also known as neurotransmitters can suddenly fail, resulting in what is known as a seizure attack. Epilepsy occurs when a few too many brain cells become excited, or activated simultaneously, so that the brain cannot function properly and to it’s highest potential. Epilepsy is characterized when there is an abnormal imbalance in the chemical activity of the brain, leading to a disruption in the electrical activity of the brain. This disruption specifically occurs in the central nervous system (CNS), which is the part of the nervous system that contains the brain and spinal cord. This causes an interruption in communication between presynaptic neurons and postsynaptic neurons; between the axon of one neuron, the message sender and the dendrite of another neuron, the message recipient. Consequently, the effects that epileptic seizures may induce may range anywhere from mild to severe, life-threatening ramifications and complications. There are many different types of seizures associa...
Like many Chicanos, she developed a strong sense of cultural belonging. This is primarily due to discrimination amongst neighboring Mexicans, whites, and anyone in between. Latinos and latinas would attack her, saying “...cultural traitor, you’re speaking the oppressor’s language, you’re ruining the Spanish language” (Anzaldua 412). It was this ethnic struggle that drove her to latch onto her cultural background so strongly. In the personal narrative “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua, Anzaldua states “When other races have given up their tongue, we’ve kept ours. We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant norteamericano culture” (Anzaldua 419) when referring to the resilience of her native people. She states this in response to other cultural groups having abandoned their language, meanwhile they retained theirs. The Chicanos are aware of the harsh standards of North American society. By saying “When other races have given up their tongue, we’ve kept ours,” she means that even when other ethnicities have been pushed to eliminate their languages, her ethnicity stayed strong; they refused to cave in. Likewise, when Anzaldua states “We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant norteamericano culture,” she draws pride from her culture’s ability to fend off even the most suffocating adversities. In this way, Anzaldua conveys
In the story "Woman Hollering Creek" Sandra Cisneros discusses the issues of living life as a married woman through a character named Cleofilas; a character who is married to a man who abuses her physically and mentally .Cisneros reveals the way the culture puts a difference between a male and a female, men above women. Cisneros has been famous about writing stories about the latino culture and how women are treated; she explain what they go through as a child, teen and when they are married; always dominated by men because of how the culture has been adapted. "Woman Hollering Creek" is one of the best examples. A character who grows up without a mother and who has no one to guid and give her advise about life.
Later, the doctors told me I had epilepsy, specifically the type known as grand mal. Immediately, the doctors put me on some medications to prevent the seizures. They also gave my parents a bunch of packets of information about epilepsy. When I got older, some of those packets informed me that 20-25 million people have suffered from an epileptic seizure. Many people grow out of childhood epilepsy or they take medicine to control it. However, there is still a risk of having a seizure even if you take medication. Over the past few years, I have become increasingly aware of the chance of a seizure at any time.
... middle of paper ... ... Sandra Cisneros took a risk and got remarkably far with her passion for mixing the cultures and the identities of women. Her voice is what emphasizes the article to show how the goal is to redistribute the language and culture, not criticizing the “New World”.
...e was not being abused, she was still in great pain and going through a large amount of sorrow after the loss of her family. The author of this story relates to women being discriminated because she was born in the 40’s and came from chili. In her biography she wrote “I was not supposed to be in any way a liberated person. I was a female born in the ‘40s in a patriarchal family; I was supposed to marry and make everyone around me happy.” –Isabel Allende (pg 1224)
The novel seemed to me to be an examination of the struggle of one woman for individual freedom and identity in juxtaposition to overwhelmingly mixed messages from her family, tribal community, and the white community into which she tries to assimilate. Cecelia stands in for native American women as the poster child of assimilation and achievement, her struggles, identity crisis, and inability to blend in either world. I liked that Ms. Hale did not let Cecelia off the hook as a protagonist, I believe that Cecelia received a thorough scourging from both the indigenous community and the white community. What I did not like about the novel were the feelings of victimization and the reasons for Cecelia’s victimization I grasped from the novel. I began at some point in the novel to feel that Ms. Hale’s portrayal of gender and income based discrimination were too unfairly tied to Cecelia’s ethnicity. I do not dispute that this is likely, but I do disagree that the types of gender based bias Cecelia experienced were solely because of her ethnicity and color.
She is the one that refuses to oblige to societal orders. She is the “Shadow-Beast” (38) with “Chicana identity grounded in the Indian woman’s history of resistance” (43). Although alienated physically, Anzaldua is “immobilized” (43) mentally the more confined she becomes in a culture engulfed in pure oppression. She claims her “shadow-beast” as the depiction of her highly wanted independence as an individual human being, which eventually forces her to leave her family behind to find herself separately from the “intrinsic nature buried under the personality that had been imposed” (38) for people like Anzaldua for many years. Her push for rebellion sets a voice for the silenced anger and pure resistance against the ostracism of herself, her family, culture, and the white-washed society she has been born into. To be the only Chicana, lesbian, and rebellious woman in her family is considered sinful, as women, according to Anzaldua, in Mexico only have “three directions she could turn: to the church as a nun, to the streets as a prostitute, or to the home as a mother” (39). Noticing that women are culturally restricted to these roles, Anzaldua creates the opposite role for herself claiming to take the “fourth choice” by “entering the world by way of education and career and becoming self-autonomous persons,” (39), which she uses to her advantage to transform the prolonged oppression into her long awaited freedom to live as an openly queer woman
In the Book women are looked upon as objects by men whether they are boyfriends, friends fathers or husbands. The girls in the novel grow up with the mentality that looks and appearance are the most important things to a woman. Cisneros also shows how Latino women are expected to be loyal to their husbands, and that a husband should have complete control of the relationship. Yet on the other hand, Cisneros describes the character Esperanza as being different. Even though she is born and raised in the same culture as the women around her, she is not happy with it, and knows that someday she will break free from its ties, because she is mentally strong and has a talent for telling stories. She comes back through her stories by showing the women that they can be independent and live their own lives. In a way this is Cinceros' way of coming back and giving back to the women in her community.