HOUSE ON MANGO STREET SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
1. Titles and Word Choice WIP entries: Where does tone come from? How do you create tone? What is your “dark wood”? What is your “straightforward path”? What are your impeding beasts? Your leopard (panther), lion, and she-wolf? If you were a house, what would you be? Why? Be detailed. 2. Biographical Information on Langston Hughes Langston Hughes Poems Harlem Mother to Son The Negro Speaks of Rivers I, Too WIP ENTRY: REACT TO HUGHE’S USE OF SYMBOLS / MOTIFS/ THEMES 3. Biography and Criticism: Esmeralda Santiago How To Eat a Guava How To Eat a Guava Connections WIP ENTRY: How does Santiago use a simple symbol to talk about a concept? 4. Biography and Context: Sandra Cisneros House on Mango Street: Themes, Motifs, and Symbols 5. Common Symbols in Dreams See Also: -House on Mango Street PDF (on issuu) Full Text in ENGLISH -Dante’s Inferno (see issuu) -Theme Song from Schindler’s List (Perlmann) -Dictionary of Literature Symbols PDF (on issuu) -Works of Langston Hughes PDF (on issuu) -Myths and Legends for stories (Stack of PDFs – on issuu) -When I was Puerto Rican Criticism (in Spanish)
TITLES can be straightforward, deceptive, cultural based, “date stamped,” and connotative. The WORD ASSOCIATION GAME has the student write for thirty seconds straight each word in a title (or the important ones). So: “The House on Mango Street” would warrant 90 seconds of “listing associative words (30 seconds for House, 30 seconds for Mango, 30 seconds for Street). An additional 30 seconds may be granted if the title creates an additional meaning when put together as a phrase. Consider the following, placing 30 seconds of associative words in the space below each item. Be “true to yourself” and stick to the clock.
Lord of the Flies (Lord, Flies, “Lord of the Flies”)…90 seconds
Animal Farm (Animal, Farm, “Animal Farm”)…90 seconds
Red Scarf Girl (Red, Scarf, Girl, “Red Scarf Girl”)….120 seconds
Great Expectations (Great, Expectations, “Great Expectations”) …. 90 seconds
House on Mango Street (House, Mango, Street)….90 seconds
STEP TWO (HOUSE on MANGO STREET is used as a sample) Consider the Connotation of the List of Words,
If the pool of words from HOUSE is mostly positive in connotation, place a PLUS sign next to the list.
If the pool of words from HOUSE is mostly negative in connotation, place a MINUS sign next to the list.
If the pool of words from HOUSE is an even split, put a check mark next to the list
You may place a check minus if the list leans towards negative, or a check plus if the list leans towards positive.
Repeat the process for the other words in the title.
Combine the overall score to come up with a Connotation mark for the entire title.
So, if HOUSE is Check PLUS, MANGO is PLUS, and STREET is CHECK, the average would be a CHECK PLUS.
Discuss your findings with other group members.
STEP THREE: Consider the purpose / intent of the title. Is it being “honest”, “ironic”, “deceptive”, “playful”, etc.?
Once done, you can truly ask what does the title mean?
TONAL WORDS
Consider the following works and the words used to create tone. Try to list at least TEN words, their usage, and how they create an overall feel to the piece. Describe the TONE that results, keeping in mind that all work has Variety, and therefore, may have nuanced tone, or variations of intensity. -
Opening of Dante’s Inferno (see issuu) Langston Hughes Poetry (included here) How to Eat a Guava (included here)
For the Reading House on Mango Street, consider the symbols, themes, motifs, juxtapositions, and even omissions by coming up with a chapter by chapter list. -
Symbols and Word Choice used in House on Mango Street (see issuu)
How do these word lists assist in the overall message / universal theme of the work?
Langston Hughes Poet Details 1902–1967 Langston Hughes was first recognized as an important literary figure during the 1920s, a period known as the "Harlem Renaissance" because of the number of emerging black writers. Du Bose Heyward wrote in the New York Herald Tribune in 1926: "Langston Hughes, although only twenty-four years old, is already conspicuous in the group of Negro intellectuals who are dignifying Harlem with a genuine art life. . . . It is, however, as an individual poet, not as a member of a new and interesting literary group, or as a spokesman for a race that Langston Hughes must stand or fall. . . . Always intensely subjective, passionate, keenly sensitive to beauty and possessed of an unfaltering musical sense, Langston Hughes has given us a 'first book' that marks the opening of a career well worth watching." Despite Heyward's statement, much of Hughes's early work was roundly criticized by many black intellectuals for portraying what they thought to be an unattractive view of black life. In his autobiographical The Big Sea, Hughes commented: "Fine Clothes to the Jew was well received by the literary magazines and the white press, but the Negro critics did not like it at all. The Pittsburgh Courier ran a big headline across the top of the page,LANGSTON HUGHES' BOOK OF POEMS TRASH. The headline in the New YorkAmsterdam News was LANGSTON HUGHES—THE SEWER DWELLER. The ChicagoWhip characterized me as 'the poet low-rate of Harlem.' Others called the book a disgrace to the race, a return to the dialect tradition, and a parading of all our racial defects before the public. . . . The Negro critics and many of the intellectuals were very sensitive about their race in books. (And still are.) In anything that white people were
likely to read, they wanted to put their best foot forward, their politely polished and cultural foot—and only that foot." An example of the type of criticism of which Hughes was writing is Estace Gay's comments on Fine Clothes to the Jew. "It does not matter to me whether every poem in the book is true to life," Gay wrote. "Why should it be paraded before the American public by a Negro author as being typical or representative of the Negro? Bad enough to have white authors holding up our imperfections to public gaze. Our aim ought to be [to] present to the general public, already misinformed both by well meaning and malicious writers, our higher aims and aspirations, and our better selves." Commenting on reviewers like Gay, Hughes wrote: "I sympathized deeply with those critics and those intellectuals, and I saw clearly the need for some of the kinds of books they wanted. But I did not see how they could expect every Negro author to write such books. Certainly, I personally knew very few people anywhere who were wholly beautiful and wholly good. Besides I felt that the masses of our people had as much in their lives to put into books as did those more fortunate ones who had been born with some means and the ability to work up to a master's degree at a Northern college. Anyway, I didn't know the upper class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren't people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to me good people, too." Hoyt W. Fuller commented that Hughes "chose to identify with plain black people—not because it required less effort and sophistication, but precisely because he saw more truth and profound significance in doing so. Perhaps in this he was inversely influenced by his father—who, frustrated by being the object of scorn in his native land, rejected his own people. Perhaps the poet's reaction to his father's flight from the American racial reality drove him to embrace it with extra fervor." (Langston Hughes's parents separated shortly after his birth and his father moved to Mexico. The elder Hughes came to feel a deep dislike and revulsion for other American blacks.) In Hughes's own words, his poetry is about "workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in New York, or Seventh Street in Washington or South State in Chicago—people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten, buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July." In fact, the title Fine Clothes to the Jew, which was misunderstood and disliked by many people, was derived from the Harlemites Hughes saw pawning their own clothing; most of the pawn shops and other stores in Harlem at that time were owned by Jewish people. Lindsay Patterson, a novelist who served as Hughes's assistant, believed that Hughes was "critically, the most abused poet in America. . . . Serious white critics ignored him, less serious ones compared his poetry to Cassius Clay doggerel, and most black critics only grudgingly admired him. Some, like James Baldwin, were downright malicious about his poetic achievement. But long after Baldwin and the rest of us are gone, I suspect Hughes' poetry will be blatantly around growing in stature until it is recognized for its genius. Hughes' tragedy was double-edged: he was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was demode, and he didn't go much beyond one of his earliest themes,
black is beautiful. He had the wit and intelligence to explore the black human condition in a variety of depths, but his tastes and selectivity were not always accurate, and pressures to survive as a black writer in a white society (and it was a miracle that he did for so long) extracted an enormous creative toll." Nevertheless, Hughes, more than any other black poet or writer, recorded faithfully the nuances of black life and its frustrations. Although Hughes had trouble with both black and white critics, he was the first black American to earn his living solely from his writing and public lectures. Part of the reason he was able to do this was the phenomenal acceptance and love he received from average black people. A reviewer for Black Worldnoted in 1970: "Those whose prerogative it is to determine the rank of writers have never rated him highly, but if the weight of public response is any gauge then Langston Hughes stands at the apex of literary relevance among Black people. The poet occupies such a position in the memory of his people precisely because he recognized that 'we possess within ourselves a great reservoir of physical and spiritual strength,' and because he used his artistry to reflect this back to the people. He used his poetry and prose to illustrate that 'there is no lack within the Negro people of beauty, strength and power,' and he chose to do so on their own level, on their own terms." Hughes brought a varied and colorful background to his writing. Before he was twelve years old he had lived in six different American cities. When his first book was published, he had already been a truck farmer, cook, waiter, college graduate, sailor, and doorman at a nightclub in Paris, and had visited Mexico, West Africa, the Azores, the Canary Islands, Holland, France, and Italy. As David Littlejohn observed in his Black on White: A Critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes: "On the whole, Hughes' creative life [was] as full, as varied, and as original as Picasso's, a joyful, honest monument of a career. There [was] no noticeable sham in it, no pretension, no self-deceit; but a great, great deal of delight and smiling irresistible wit. If he seems for the moment upstaged by angrier men, by more complex artists, if 'different views engage' us, necessarily, at this trying stage of the race war, he may well outlive them all, and still be there when it's over. . . . Hughes' [greatness] seems to derive from his anonymous unity with his people. He seems to speak for millions, which is a tricky thing to do." Hughes reached many people through his popular fictional character, Jesse B. Semple (shortened to Simple). Simple is a poor man who lives in Harlem, a kind of comic nogood, a stereotype Hughes turned to advantage. He tells his stories to Boyd, the foil in the stories who is a writer much like Hughes, in return for a drink. His tales of his troubles with work, women, money, and life in general often reveal, through their very simplicity, the problems of being a poor black man in a racist society. "White folks," Simple once commented, "is the cause of a lot of inconvenience in my life." Simple's musings first appeared in 1942 in "From Here to Yonder," a column Hughes wrote for the Chicago Defender and later for the New York Post. According to a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews,their original intent was "to convince black Americans to support the U.S. war effort." They were later published in several volumes. A more recent collection, 1994's The Return of Simple, contains previously unpublished material but remains current in its themes, according to a Publishers Weekly critic who
noted Simple's addressing of such issues as political correctness, children's rights, and the racist undercurrent behind contraception and sterilization proposals. Donald C. Dickinson wrote in his Bio-Bibliography of Langston Hughes that the "charm of Simple lies in his uninhibited pursuit of those two universal goals, understanding and security. As with most other humans, he usually fails to achieve either of these goals and sometimes once achieved they disappoint him. . . . Simple has a tough resilience, however, that won't allow him to brood over a failure very long. . . . Simple is a well-developed character, both believable and lovable. The situations he meets and discusses are so true to life everyone may enter the fun. This does not mean that Simple is in any way dull. He injects the ordinary with his own special insights. . . . Simple is a natural, unsophisticated man who never abandons his hope in tomorrow." A reviewer for Black World commented on the popularity of Simple: "The people responded. Simple lived in a world they knew, suffered their pangs, experienced their joys, reasoned in their way, talked their talk, dreamed their dreams, laughed their laughs, voiced their fears—and all the while underneath, he affirmed the wisdom which anchored at the base of their lives. It was not that ideas and events and places and people beyond the limits of Harlem—all of the Harlems—did not concern him; these things, indeed, were a part of his consciousness; but Simple's rock-solid commonsense enabled him to deal with them with balance and intelligence. . . . Simple knows who he is and what he is, and he knows that the status of expatriate offers no solution, no balm. The struggle is here, and it can only be won here, and no constructive end is served through fantasies and illusions and false efforts at disguising a basic sense of inadequacy. Simple also knows that the strength, the tenacity, the commitment which are necessary to win the struggle also exist within the Black community." Hoyt W. Fuller believed that, like Simple, "the key to Langston Hughes . . . was the poet's deceptive and profound simplicity. Profound because it was both willed and ineffable, because some intuitive sense even at the beginning of his adulthood taught him that humanity was of the essence and that it existed undiminished in all shapes, sizes, colors and conditions. Violations of that humanity offended his unshakable conviction that mankind is possessed of the divinity of God." It was Hughes's belief in humanity and his hope for a world in which people could sanely and with understanding live together that led to his decline in popularity in the racially turbulent latter years of his life. Unlike younger and more militant writers, Hughes never lost his conviction that "most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been." Reviewing The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Timesin Poetry, Laurence Lieberman recognized that Hughes's "sensibility [had] kept pace with the times," but he criticized his lack of a personal political stance. "Regrettably, in different poems, he is fatally prone to sympathize with starkly antithetical politics of race," Lieberman commented. "A reader can appreciate his catholicity, his tolerance of all the rival—and mutually hostile—views of his outspoken compatriots, from Martin Luther King to Stokely Carmichael, but we are tempted to ask, what are Hughes' politics? And if he has none, why not? The age demands intellectual commitment from its spokesmen. A poetry whose chief claim on our attention is moral, rather than aesthetic, must take sides politically." Despite some recent criticism, Hughes's position in the American literary scene seems to be secure. David Littlejohn wrote that Hughes is "the one sure Negro classic, more
certain of permanence than even Baldwin or Ellison or Wright. . . . His voice is as sure, his manner as original, his position as secure as, say Edwin Arlington Robinson's orRobinson Jeffers'. . . . By molding his verse always on the sounds of Negro talk, the rhythms of Negro music, by retaining his own keen honesty and directness, his poetic sense and ironic intelligence, he maintained through four decades a readable newness distinctly his own." The Block and The Sweet and Sour Animal Book are posthumously published collections of Hughes's poetry for children that position his words against a backdrop of visual art.The Block pairs Hughes's poems with a series of six collages by Romare Bearden that bears the book's title. The Sweet and Sour Animal Book contains previously unpublished and repeatedly rejected poetry of Hughes from the 1930s. Here, the editors have combined it with the artwork of elementary school children at the Harlem School of the Arts. The results, noted Veronica Chambers in the New York Times Book Review, "reflect Hughes's childlike wonder as well as his sense of humor." Chambers also commented on the rhythms of Hughes's words, noting that "children love a good rhyme" and that Hughes gave them "just a simple but seductive taste of the blues." Hughes's poems have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Russian, Yiddish, and Czech; many of them have been set to music. Donald B. Gibson noted in the introduction to Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays that Hughes "has perhaps the greatest reputation (worldwide) that any black writer has ever had. Hughes differed from most of his predecessors among black poets, and (until recently) from those who followed him as well, in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read. He has been, unlike most nonblack poets other than Walt Whitman, Vachel Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg, a poet of the people. . . . Until the time of his death, he spread his message humorously— though always seriously—to audiences throughout the country, having read his poetry to more people (possibly) than any other American poet."
Harlem
LANGSTON HUGHES
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?
MOTHER TO SON – Langston Hughes Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor -Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now -For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers – Langston Hughes I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I, Too – Langston Hughes I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
BIOGRAPHY AND CRITISM: Esmeralda Santiago was born in Puerto Rico, the eldest of eleven children raised by a single mother. When she was thirteen years old, the family moved to Brooklyn, New York. Within two years, she had learned enough English to be accepted into the prestigious Performing Arts High School. She spent eight years studying part-time at community colleges while working full-time, until she was accepted as a transfer student to Harvard University with a full scholarship and received her Master's degree from Sarah Lawrence College. Upon graduating magna cum laude in 1976, she and Frank Cantor, her husband, founded Cantomedia, a film and production company that has won numerous awards for excellence in documentary filmmaking. She has done extensive work for victims of domestic violence, including helping found a Youth Service Center and a shelter for battered women in Massachusetts. Her first book, a memoir of her childhood entitled When I Was Puerto Rican appeared in 1993 to great critical acclaim. She soon followed this memoir with the novelAmerica's Dream. Her most recent novel is entitled Almost a Woman. Aside from her achievements as a writer, Esmeralda Santiago is also an editor. Her work as an editor may be seen in Las Christmas: Favorite Latino Authors Share Their Holiday Memories. Currently, Santiago lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband and two children. Santiago's memoir of her Puerto Rican childhood culminates in her move to New York, where she gained an education, but lost the sense of belonging, within a family and within a culture, once so strong in her childhood. Santiago gives the point of view of the child in the earlier sections of the memoir. "Santiago's autobiographical account cinematically recaptures her past and her island culture. What is particularly appealing about Santiago's story is the insight it offers to readers unaware of the double bind Puerto Rican Americans find themselves in: the identity in conflict. Is [she] black or white? Is she rural or urban? Even more importantly, is she Puerto Rican or is she American? [One] can only be grateful that Esmeralda Santiago has chosen to explore her culture and share what she has found." (The Los Angeles Times Book Review) Santiago communicates the textures of life (how to eat a guava, the ceremony for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven) in Puerto Rico most vividly, while at the same
time dealing concretely with family relationships and conflicts. Her journey to a new country, like that of many Puerto Ricans touched on in her book, captures the experience of many American immigrant groups. Santiago refers to her memoir, "When I began writing [When I Was Puerto Rican], I had no idea it would result in a dialogue about cultural identity. But as I've traveled around the country talking about it, people tell me that, while the culture I'm describing may not be the same as the one they grew up in, the feelings and experiences are familiar, and some of the events could have been taken from their own lives. It has been particularly poignant to speak to immigrants who have returned to their countries, only to discover how much they have changed by immersion in North American culture. They accept and understand the irony of the past tense in the title, the feeling that, while at one time they could not identify themselves as anything but the nationality to which they were born, once they've lived in the U.S. their 'cultural purity' has been compromised, and they no longer fit as well in their native countries, nor do they feel one hundred percent comfortable as Americans." The merging of two cultures proves to be a challenge to many immigrants, and Santiago explores these difficulties of change in her memoir. In her words, hopes of finding a balance between the two cultures is of utmost importance. In finding the balance, merging the past with the future, perhaps Santiago will be able to understand and claim her identity. "When I returned to Puerto Rico after living in New York for seven years, I was told I was no longer Puerto Rican because my Spanish was rusty, my gaze too direct, my personality too assertive for a Puerto Rican woman, and I refused to eat some of the traditional foods like morcilla and tripe stew. I felt as Puerto Rican as when I left the island, but to those who had never left, I was contaminated by Americanisms, and therefore, had become less than Puerto Rican. Yet, in the United States, my darkness, my accented speech, my frequent lapses into the confused silence between English and Spanish identified me as foreign, nonAmerican. In writing the book I wanted to get back to that feeling of Puertoricanness I had before I came here. Its title reflects who I was then, and asks, who am I today?" The novel America's Dream shares similar themes to When I Was Puerto Rican. The novel may be seen in light of cultural identification, as the main character America merges her Puerto Rican culture with that of the American culture. However, there is also another theme that permeates the novel. The relationships of mothers and daughters and the time of childhood, appear to be one of the focal points of the novel. "This coming of age memoir will reintroduce you to childhood. . . . It will speak to anyone who . . . recalls a child's bittersweet loss of innocence and to anyone who simply enjoys good writing." (Miami Herald) America's relationship with her mother as well as her daughter depicts the cycle of womanhood and motherhood, that exists in the Puerto Rican culture. In America's effort to overcome the limitations given to
the cycle of womanhood and motherhood, she faces the challenge of not losing her bond with both her mother and her daughter. The novel explores the complexity of maintaining rather than severing the bond that exists between the two, despite distance and hardships. Another relationship explored in the novel by Santiago is the cycle of abusive relationships, which is seen through America's relationship with her boyfriend, Correa, who is the father of her daughter. Santiago, in writing this novel, illustrates the challenges of a woman in the Puerto Rican culture. The difficulty of rising from lower class society and making a future for oneself seems almost unattainable. America's dream signifies the hope in change. In dreaming of having her own home, driving her own car, and having an ideal family, America takes the reader through an emotional and psychological journey into the challenges of many Latina women. It is Santiago's eloquence with words that capture the essence of her writing style and her search for cultural identity. Using words as her medium, Santiago paints a beautiful picture of her life. Santiago writes with such clarity and fierceness that it is impossible for any person not to see, feel and understand what she went through in her remarkable journey. Santiago's style allows for easy reading while providing deep insights about cultural identity. Whether through personal conflicts about searching for one's identity or overcoming trials and fears that accompany such a search, Santiago captures these experiences in showing how strong will and determination can defeat even the most difficult circumstances.
How to Eat a Guava (from When I Was Puerto Rican) Esmeralda Santiago Barco que no anda, no llega a puerto. A ship that doesn’t sail, never reaches port.
There are guavas at the Shop & Save. I pick one the size of a tennis ball and finger the prickly stem end. It feels familiarly bumpy and firm. The guava is not quite ripe; the skin is still a dark green. I smell it and imagine a pale pink center, the seeds tightly embedded in the flesh. A ripe guava is yellow, although some varieties have a pink tinge. The skin is thick, firm, and sweet. Its heart is bright pink and almost solid with seeds. The most delicious part of the guava surrounds the tiny seeds. If you don’t know how to eat a guava, the seeds end up in the crevices between your teeth. When you bite into a ripe guava, your teeth must grip the bumpy surface and sink into the thick edible skin without hitting the center. It takes experience to do this, as it’s quite tricky to determine how far beyond the skin the seeds begin. Some years, when the rains have been plentiful and the nights cool, you can bite into a guava and not find many seeds. The guava bushes grow close to the ground, their branches laden with green then yellow fruit that seem to ripen overnight. These guavas are large and juicy, almost seedless, their roundness enticing you to have one more, just one more, because next year the rains may not come. As children, we didn’t always wait for the fruit to ripen. We raided the bushes as soon as the guavas were large enough to bend the branch. A green guava is sour and hard. You bite into it at its widest point, because it’s easier to grasp with your teeth. You hear the skin, meat, and seeds crunching inside your head, while the inside of your mouth explodes in little spurts of sour. You grimace, your eyes water, and your cheeks disappear as your lips purse into a tight O. But you have another and then another, enjoying the crunchy sounds, the acid taste, the gritty texture of the unripe center. At night, your mother makes you drink castor oil,° which she says tastes better than a green guava. That’s when you know for sure that you’re a child and she has stopped being one.
I had my last guava the day we left Puerto Rico. It was large and juicy, almost red in the center, and so fragrant that I didn’t want to eat it because I would lose the smell. All the way to the airport I scratched at it with my teeth, making little dents in the skin, chewing small pieces with my front teeth, so that I could feel the texture against my tongue, the tiny pink pellets of sweet. Today, I stand before a stack of dark green guavas, each perfectly round and hard, each $1.59. The one in my hand is tempting. It smells faintly of late summer afternoons and hopscotch under the mango tree. But this is autumn in New York, and I’m no longer a child. The guava joins its sisters under the harsh fluorescent lights of the exotic fruit display. I push my cart away, toward the apples and pears of my adulthood, their nearly seedless ripeness predictable and bittersweet.
How To Eat A Guava Literary Focus Style: Diction and Imagery An important element of an author’s style is diction, or word choice, and an important element of diction is imagery. Imagery is language that appeals to one or more of our senses—sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. An image can help to re-create a place, a thing, or a person. Images give printed words on a page the glow and hum of real life. In “How to Eat a Guava,” Esmeralda Santiago takes a relatively simple subject—the eating of a tropical fruit— and turns it into a feast for all the senses. If you have eaten a guava, see how well her imagery re-creates the experience for you. If, on the other hand, this is your introduction to the guava—enjoy! Tone: An Attitude Diction and imagery have a powerful effect on creating tone in a piece of writing. Tone is a writer’s attitude toward a subject. Since tone can be difficult to identify, it’s helpful to think of a tone as “an attitude,” which might be positive or negative, joyful or sorrowful, serious or humorous. A writer’s tone can usually be expressed in a single word. As you read this excerpt from Santiago’s memoir, you’ll notice that her vivid imagery conveys an attitude about the guavas of her youth in Puerto Rico. What tone does Santiago create?
Background The author of “How to Eat a Guava” comes from Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island where guavas and other tropical fruits grow in abundance. Located about one thousand miles southeast of Florida, Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States, and its inhabitants are U.S. citizens. Spanish is the chief language of Puerto Rico, reflecting its long history as a Spanish colony; English is its other official language.
Biography and Context Sandra Cisneros was born in 1954 in Chicago to a Spanish-
speaking Mexican father and an English-speaking mother of Mexican descent. She was the third child and only daughter in a family of seven children. While she spent most of her childhood in one of Chicago’s Puerto Rican neighborhoods, she also traveled back and forth to Mexico with her family. Cisneros has published two books of poetry, My Wicked Wicked Ways and Loose Woman; a children’s book titled Hair/Pelitos; a collection of stories titled Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories; and, most recently, a second novel, Caramelo. Cisneros is part of a group of Chicana and Latina writers who became prominent in the 1980s and 1990s, among them Gloria Anzaldua, Laura Esquivel, and Julia Alvarez. Chicana refers to a woman of Mexican descent who lives in the United States. Latina is a more encompassing word, referring to women from all the Latin American countries. These women were part of a larger group of American minority women, such as Amy Tan and Toni Morrison, who found success as writers at the end of the twentieth century. While many of them had been writing for some time, renewed interest in the issues of race and gender in the 1980s provided a milieu in which their work became a vital part of the dialogue taking place. The House on Mango Street received mostly positive reviews when it was published in 1984, and it has sold more than two million copies worldwide. However, some male Mexican-American critics have attacked the novel, arguing that by writing about a character whose goal is to leave the barrio (a neighborhood or community where most of the residents are of Spanishspeaking origin), Cisneros has betrayed the barrio, which they see as an important part of Mexican tradition. Others have criticized the novel as encouraging assimilation, labeling Cisneros a vendida, or sellout. Such critics have condemned Cisneros for perpetuating what they see as negative stereotypes of Mexican-American men (the wife-beaters, the overbearing husbands), while at the same time contending that the feminism Cisneros
embraces was created by white women. Cisneros’s defenders claim that a Mexican-American woman’s experiences are very different from the experiences of a Mexican-American man, and that it’s therefore unfair to expect Cisneros, a woman, to present a unified front with male Mexican-American writers. In The House on Mango Street, Cisneros focuses on the problems of being a woman in a largely patriarchal Hispanic society. The House on Mango Street consists of what Cisneros calls “lazy poems,” vignettes that are not quite poems and not quite full stories. The vignettes are sometimes only two or three paragraphs long, and they often contain internal rhymes, as a poem might. This form also reflects a young girl’s short attention span, flitting from one topic to another, never placing too much importance on any one event. Within these very short pieces, Cisneros introduces dozens of characters, some only once or twice, and in this way, the structure of the novel imitates the geography of the barrio. No one person has very much space, either in the barrio or on the page, and the neighborhood is small enough that even a young girl can know everyone in it by name. The conflicts and problems in these little stories are never fully resolved, just as the fates of men, women, and children in the barrio are often uncertain. Finally, the novel’s structure suggests the variable fate of Chicana women, whose life stories often depend on men. Without a dominant, omniscient, masculine voice to tell the women’s stories, their narratives are left waiting and unresolved. Critics have compared The House on Mango Street to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, a long essay in which Woolf asserts that women need a place and financial resources of their own in order to write successfully. The protagonist in The House on Mango Street, Esperanza, does long for a place of her own, but writing is a way for her to get that place, not the other way around. In this way,The House on Mango Street is more similar to A House for Mr. Biswas, by British colonial novelist V. S. Naipaul, in which an Indian in Trinidad struggles to balance his interactions with his wife’s extended family and his dream of
possessing his own private space. In many ways, The House on Mango Street is a traditional bildungsroman—that is, a coming-of-age story. Only one year passes over the course of the novel, but Esperanza matures tremendously during this period. The novel resembles other artists’ coming-of-age stories, including James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Like the hero of that novel, Stephen Dedalus, Esperanza has a keen eye for observation and is gifted in her use of language. Though Esperanza experiences two sexual assaults, this work should not be considered a sexual-abuse novel. For the young girls in The House on Mango Street, assault is only one aspect, and not a particularly shocking one, of growing up. The assault may change Esperanza’s view of sex and men, but it does not make her want to leave the barrio—that desire begins to grow well before the assaults happen. Some feminist critics blame Cisneros for not criticizing men more strongly in the novel. After Esperanza is raped, she does not blame the boys who did it, only the girl who was not there when Esperanza needed her and the women who have not debunked romantic myths about sex. In Esperanza’s world, male violence is so ordinary that blaming them for the rape would be unusual. The boys, as she says in an early section, live in their own worlds. By completely separating the men’s world from the women’s, Cisneros indicts both men and her culture. Her criticism is even more powerful because she veils her anger instead of making it explicit. In The House on Mango Street, Cisneros demonstrates her ability to critique her culture without openly or unfairly condemning it.
House on Mango Street Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Power of Language Throughout The House on Mango Street, particularly in “No Speak English,” those who are not able to communicate effectively (or at all) are relegated to the bottom levels of society. Mamacita moves to the country to be with her husband, and she becomes a prisoner of her apartment because she does not speak English. She misses home and listens to the Spanish radio station, and she is distraught when her baby begins learning English words. His new language excludes her. Similarly, Esperanza’s father could not even choose what he ate when he first moved to the country, because he did not know the words for any of the foods but ham and eggs. Esperanza’s mother may be a native English speaker, but her letter to the nuns at Esperanza’s school is unconvincing to them in part because it is poorly written. Esperanza observes the people around her and realizes that if not knowing or not mastering the language creates powerlessness, then having the ability to manipulate language will give her power. She wants to change her name so that she can have power over her own destiny. Her Aunt Lupe tells her to keep writing because it will keep her free, and Esperanza eventually understands what her aunt means. Writing keeps Esperanza spiritually free, because putting her experiences into words gives her power over them. If she can use beautiful language to write about a terrible experience, then the experience seems less awful. Esperanza’s spiritual freedom may eventually give her the power to be literally free as well. The Struggle for Self-Definition The struggle for self-definition is a common theme in a coming-of-age novel, or bildungsroman, and in The House on Mango Street, Esperanza’s struggle to define herself underscores her every action and
encounter. Esperanza must define herself both as a woman and as an artist, and her perception of her identity changes over the course of the novel. In the beginning of the novel Esperanza wants to change her name so that she can define herself on her own terms, instead of accepting a name that expresses her family heritage. She wants to separate herself from her parents and her younger sister in order to create her own life, and changing her name seems to her an important step in that direction. Later, after she becomes more sexually aware, Esperanza would like to be “beautiful and cruel” so men will like her but not hurt her, and she pursues that goal by becoming friends with Sally. After she is assaulted, she doesn’t want to define herself as “beautiful and cruel” anymore, and she is, once again, unsure of who she is. Eventually, Esperanza decides she does not need to set herself apart from the others in her neighborhood or her family heritage by changing her name, and she stops forcing herself to develop sexually, which she isn’t fully ready for. She accepts her place in her community and decides that the most important way she can define herself is as a writer. As a writer, she observes and interacts with the world in a way that sets her apart from non-writers, giving her the legitimate new identity she’s been searching for. Writing promises to help her leave Mango Street emotionally, and possibly physically as well. Women’s Unfulfilled Responsibilities to Each Other Early in the novel, Esperanza says that boys and girls live in different worlds, and this observation proves true of men and women in every stage of life. Since the women’s world is often isolating and grants women so little power, Esperanza feels women have a responsibility to protect and make life easier for each other. However, on Mango Street, this responsibility goes unfulfilled. The boys and men in The House on Mango Street are consistently violent, exploitative, or absent, but their world is so foreign to the women that no woman rebels against the men or calls for them to change. Esperanza may call out for women to help each other in the face of the unchanging male world, but no one answers.
Esperanza accepts more responsibility for women as she matures, and as she does, she confronts other women’s indifference more directly. At first Esperanza is responsible only for her younger sister, Nenny, but her responsibilities grow when she befriends Sally. Esperanza tries to save Sally from having to kiss a group of boys in “The Monkey Garden.” However, when Esperanza tries to enlist one of the boys’ mothers to help her, the mother refuses. Later, Sally abandons Esperanza and leaves her vulnerable to male attackers in “Red Clowns.” Esperanza expects female friends to protect each other, and Sally does not fulfill this responsibility. Ultimately, Esperanza understands that even if and when she leaves Mango Street, she will continue to take responsibility for the women in her neighborhood. She feels the responsibility deeply and will not forget it. Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Names Esperanza is one of the only characters in The House on Mango Street with just one name—most characters have two. Some have a real name and a nickname, such as Nenny, whose real name is Magdalena, and Aunt Lupe, whose real name is Guadeloupe. Others have an English name and a Spanish name, such as Meme Ortiz, whose Spanish name is Juan, and Meme’s dog, which has unspecified names in both languages. These dual or multiple names emphasize the mix of cultures and languages that make up Esperanza’s neighborhood and the difficulties her neighbors have in figuring out who they are, in their families, their neighborhood, even their country. The power of names to transform and empower fascinates Esperanza, who struggles with how to define herself. She mentions the transforming power of names in “My Name,” where she picks Zeze the X as a new name for herself. She also gives her current name, Esperanza, several definitions in order to make it more powerful. In “And Some More,” Esperanza discusses the fact that the Eskimos have thirty names for snow. She speculates that the Eskimos have so many names for snow because snow is so important to them, which suggests
that the more names a person has, the more important he or she is. Rachel rejoins by saying that her cousin has three last names and two first names, indicating that she, too, shares the theory that the more names one has, the better. Eventually, Esperanza places more importance on language and description than on naming alone, but her obsession with naming shows an early understanding of the importance of language. Falling Throughout The House on Mango Street, people fear falling and sometimes actually fall, which suggests the constant threat of failure or injury. Images of falling appear frequently. Angel Vargas and Meme both fall from significant heights, both with disastrous results. Marin waits for a star to fall to change her life. Esperanza even describes herself as floating in an early vignette, as a red balloon on a tether. When she finally abandons her tether, she hopes she’ll fly away and not fall to the ground as Angel and Meme did. Esperanza faces the same fear of falling her neighbors do, and she hopes for a different fate. Women by Windows n Mango Street is full of women who are trapped by their husbands, fathers, children, or their own feelings of inadequacy. Esperanza’s long-dead great-grandmother married unwillingly and spent her whole life sitting sadly by her window. Four women in Esperanza’s neighborhood are trapped in their apartments—Mamacita, Rafaela, Minerva, and Sally. They sit by their windows all day and look down onto the street. The group makes up a kind of community, but these women cannot communicate, and each keeps to her place without much complaint. Esperanza is determined not to become a woman sitting by a window, and she understands there is something amiss among the women in her world. Eventually, she tries to help by supporting women when she can. For now, however, the women represent a disturbing failure: that of the more liberated women to help their confined and unhappy neighbors. Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Shoes Shoes in The House on Mango Street frequently evoke images of sex and adult femininity, and for Esperanza they illustrate the conflict she feels between her emerging sexual attractiveness and her desire for independence. Esperanza makes the connection between shoes and sex for the first time when she, Lucy, and Rachel try on high-heeled shoes a neighbor gives them. The shoes transform their scarred, childish feet and legs into long, slim women’s legs, and what began as a childhood game of dress-up becomes something more dangerous, as male neighbors ogle them hungrily. That afternoon, they are happy to abandon the shoes, claiming they are bored with them. For the moment, Esperanza can smoothly shed her new sexual attractiveness and become a child again. When shoes appear again, Esperanza can’t discard them so easily. When Esperanza attends a dance and wears brown saddle shoes with her pretty new dress, she is almost paralyzed with embarrassment and self-consciousness. Men ask her to dance, and she wants to dance, but she wants more to hide her wornout little-girl shoes. Though she eventually dances with her uncle and relishes the stares of a boy, she is aware of her clunky shoes the entire time. When Esperanza wants to befriend Sally, who is sexually mature, she describes Sally’s black suede shoes and wonders if she can convince her mother to buy her a similar pair. When Sally abandons Esperanza in the monkey garden in order to fool around with boys, Esperanza thinks her own feet look foreign. Finally, in Esperanza’s vision of her dream house, her shoes are beside the bed, suggesting that she does have or will have some measure of control over her own sexuality, if only in her imagination. Trees Esperanza expresses respect and admiration for trees throughoutThe House on Mango Street, and her affection stems from her identification with their appearance, resilience, and independence. In “Four Skinny Trees,” Esperanza personifies the trees in her front yard, saying she and they understand each other, even that they teach her things. She relates to the trees because they
don’t seem to belong in the neighborhood and because they persevere despite the concrete that tries to keep them in the ground. Esperanza herself does not seem to belong, and she plans to persevere despite the obstacles posed by her poor neighborhood. Esperanza views the trees almost as a reflection of herself, comparing her own skinny neck and pointy elbows to the tree’s spindly branches. The tree in Meme Ortiz’s backyard has particular resonance for Esperanza. Even though the tree eventually turns out to be dangerous, since Meme jumps out of it and breaks both of his arms, Esperanza claims it is the most memorable part of Meme’s backyard. She points out that the tree is full of squirrels and that it dwarfs her neighborhood in age and size. This tree has flourished even more than the trees in her front yard have, again without anybody doing much to help it. Meme’s hardy tree was probably once like the elms in Esperanza’s yard, which suggests that Esperanza will perhaps be able to grow into a strong and independent woman despite the setbacks in her first year on Mango Street. Poetry The House on Mango Street contains many small poems and references to poems, which emphasize the importance of language to Esperanza and her neighbors. These references and poems include a poem Esperanza writes, jump-roping chants, and simple, internal rhymes within paragraphs of the text. We never hear some of the poems, such as those Esperanza recites to Ruthie, or those Minerva writes. The abundance of poetry suggests that the women and girls on Mango Street try to make their lives better by describing the world with beautiful language. The novel itself, with its many internal rhymes, is in some ways Esperanza’s long poem, her attempt to make some of the unpoetic aspects of her life less hard and more ordered through poetry.
SYMBOLS IN DREAMS (Abbreviated) Dreams are like letters from the unconscious mind. If only they were written in the same language we use in waking reality. Fortunately, we do have the ability to study our dreams and interpret the common dream symbols they contain. Although there aren't always hard-and-fast universal definitions, the following dream meanings offer a sound starting point to understand your own personal dream meanings.
Common Dream Symbols 1. Animals often represent the part of your psyche that feels connected to nature and survival. Being chased by a predator suggests you're holding back repressed emotions like fear or aggression. 2. Babies can symbolize a literal desire to produce offspring, or your own vulnerability or need to feel loved. They can also signify a new start. 3. Being chased is one of the most common dream symbols in all cultures. It means you're feeling threatened, so reflect on who's chasing you (they may be symbolic) and why they're a possible threat in real life. 4. Clothes make a statement about how we want people to perceive us. If your dream symbol is shabby clothing, you may feel unattractive or worn out. Changing what you wear may reflect a lifestyle change. 5. Crosses are interpreted subjectively depending on your religious beliefs. Some see it as symbolizing balance, death, or an end to a particular phase of life. The specific circumstances will help define them. 6. Exams can signify self-evaluation, with the content of the exam reflecting the part of your personality or life under inspection.
7. Death of a friend or loved one represents change (endings and new beginnings) and is not a psychic prediction of any kind. If you are recently bereaved, it may be an attempt to come to terms with the event. 8. Falling is a common dream symbol that relates to our anxieties about letting go, losing control, or somehow failing after a success. 9. Faulty machinery in dreams is caused by the language center being shut down while asleep, making it difficult to dial a phone, read the time, or search the internet. It can also represent performance anxiety. 10. Food is said to symbolize knowledge, because it nourishes the body just as information nourishes the brain. However, it could just be food. 11. Hands are always present in dreams but when they are tied up it may represent feelings of futility. Washing your hands may express guilt. Looking closely at your hands in a dream is a good way to become lucid. 12. Houses can host many common dream symbols, but the building as a whole represents your inner psyche. Each room or floor can symbolize different emotions, memories and interpretations of meaningful events. 13. Killing in your dreams does not make you a closet murderer; it represents your desire to "kill" part of your own personality. It can also symbolize hostility towards a particular person. 14. Marriage may be a literal desire to wed or a merging of the feminine and masculine parts of your psyche. 15. Missing a flight or any other kind of transport is another common dream, revealing frustration over missing important opportunities in life. It's most common when you're struggling to make a big decision.
16. Money can symbolize self worth. If you dream of exchanging money, it may show that you're anticipating some changes in your life. 17. Mountains are obstacles, so to dream of successfully climbing a mountain can reveal a true feeling of achievement. Viewing a landscape from atop a mountain can symbolize a life under review without conscious prejudice. 18. People (other dream characters) are reflections of your own psyche, and may demonstrate specific aspects of your own personality. 19. Radios and TVs can symbolize communication channels between the conscious and unconscious minds. 20. Roads, aside from being literal manifestations, convey your direction in life. This may be time to question your current "life path". 21. Schools are common dream symbols in children and teenagers but what about dreaming of school in adulthood? It may display a need to know and understand yourself, fueled by life's own lessons. 22. Teachers, aside from being literal manifestations of people, can represent authority figures with the power to enlighten you. 23. Teeth are common dream symbols. Dreaming of losing your teeth may mark a fear of getting old and being unattractive to others. 24. Being trapped (physically) is a common nightmare theme, reflecting your real life inability to escape or make the right choice.
25. Vehicles may reflect how much control you feel you have over your life - for instance is the car out of control, or is someone else driving you? 26. Water comes in many forms, symbolizing the unconscious mind. Calm pools of water reflect inner peace while a choppy ocean can suggest unease.